


All we need is somebody to lean on

by AgapantoBlu



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Basically Nicky has a relapse, Depression, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship, Matt is there to help, Multi, Only mentioned but if this turns into a long fic they'll be relevant, Past Drug Addiction, References to Depression, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2018-10-21 03:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10676511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: “Stuff came up,” he said, in a voice that let no doubts about how much goodness could be in such stuff. None. “It involves my parents and a courtroom.”Nicky didn’t react while saying those words, but Matt flinched enough for both of them. Once more, he didn’t know the details, but he knew, just like all the other Foxes, that Luther and Maria Hemmick figured in the register of campus security as “unwanted: forbidden entry”.





	1. Chapter 1

“Oh, hey, Matt, can I talk with you for a second?”

Matt lifted his head from his homework and turned around just enough so he could see Nicky from above his shoulder. He was ready to tell the other that whatever evil and potentially deadly plan he had mustered up to catch Neil and Andrew being intimate would have to wait in front of the impeding doom of  _Midterms_. Though it was tempting, oh it was. Math was so boring and Neil smugly pulling softness out of Andrew was a blessing for the soul, at least until the murderous midget noticed they were being observed. Maybe Matt could take a break? After all-

His thoughts stopped when he  _really_  took in Nicky’s face.

There was nothing wrong with Nicky’s face, actually. He still had the bruise he got in practice two days before, there where a clumsy pass from one of the new recruits had missed his racquet and instead smashed his face-protection on his nose, but nothing more. No bags under his eyes, his skin the gentle shade of Mexican warmth and some bangs slipping out of the messy bun on his nape. He was closing the door behind himself and Matt actually moved his chair to turn and face him with a frown.

It took him a moment more to realize what it was that looked out of place, in today’s display. Nicky was  _nervous_. He was checking the corridor to make sure nobody was coming in and he actually locked the door when he was done, before facing Matt with his lower lip locked between his teeth.

“Is everything okay?” He and Nicky weren’t the closest of the Foxes, but since they’d become roommates they had bonded over video games and movies, and fought over which one of them had most parental rights over Neil. They were still only on the superficial side of friendship, but with all they’d been through last year it came almost natural for most - if not all - of the Foxes to worry over each others.

Nicky strived to smile, and it was too fake to reassure Matt anyway. “Yeah, it’s fine, just, uhm-” he scratched his head, taking a few steps inside and closer but still far enough to be out of reach. It was weird, Matt decided, “-I kind of need a favor? I promise I’ll owe you, really!”

Matt blinked twice. “Sure?”

Nicky didn’t look relieved. If anything, he looked even more worried as his hand disappeared into one of the pockets of his large and formless cargo pants. 

Matt noticed because Nicky rarely wore them. 

Nicky was hot and liked to flaunt it, it wasn’t a surprise to anybody. The trousers he had on now were all but flattering of his form and the last thing Matt would expect the other to ever get out of his room with.

_Pills_. The word registered in Matt’s brain before everything else could. It was a conditioned reflex, from his times of addiction and from the time in rehab learning to see the danger before it came close enough to become temptation. 

Only later he got the whole picture: Nicky had an orange bottle of some kind of medical pills in his hand and had worn those awful pants probably only because the pockets were big enough to disguise its shape.

_God._ “ _Nicky._ ” 

“It’s not what it seems!” Nicky raised his free hand in surrender, but offered the tube to Matt with the other. That way, it was easy to read his name printed on the label in capital letters, obvious proof that the medications had been bought under a doctor’s prescription. Matt picked the bottle and read the name, unknown to him but somehow familiar. His confusion must have shown on his face when he lifted it to meet Nicky’s fleeting eyes, his fidgeting frame. “Bee gave them to me.”

“I didn’t know you had an appointment with her.” Nicky had never made a mystery of his uneasiness about meeting Dobson, her or any other therapist for what it mattered. Matt only knew bits and pieces of his reasons, but he knew they were rooted in his past with his parents and were more than valid.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to skip practice.” Lie. He saw brown eyes getting unfocused for a moment, before Nicky shrugged. Matt thought it must be fake, but said nothing and watch the other dangling a bit on the ball of his feet. “I need you to hold them for me.”

“What?!”

Nicky sighed. He straightened his shoulders for a moment, probably unconsciously as his lips mustered up a friendly smile instead, and for a moment Matt was reminded, violently, of just how much older Nicky was than his cousins. Twenty-three looked tiring, on his face. 

Andrew and Aaron were twenty. Nicky had given up three years to be assigned in their same class when they joined Palmetto State. He was older than Matt himself, yet he shrugged again and scratched the back of his neck like a teenager in front of a crush, faced with an embarrassing secret to share.

“Stuff came up,” he said, in a voice that let no doubts about how much goodness could be in such stuff.  _None_. “It involves my parents and a courtroom.”

Nicky didn’t react while saying those words, but Matt flinched enough for both of them. Once more, he didn’t know the details, but he knew, just like all the other Foxes, that Luther and Maria Hemmick figured in the register of campus security as “unwanted: forbidden entry”. He had always assumed that was Andrew’s doing, though it did sound a bit out of character coming from him.

“I’m sorry, man,” he still answered, feeling pathetically inadequate at the weight of Nicky’s words. “It sucks.” Not much better.

Nicky laughed anyway. It was a bitter sound. 

“Yeah, it does!” He didn’t sound amused, and his face was screaming happiness the same way Neil could scream ‘I’m fine’ with half his ribs bashed in. “Bee thinks I’m having a relapse.” Another shrug. “Eating little, sleeping less, nightmares on, dissociation, suicidal thoughts, you know, the whole crew. She prescribed me antidepressants, but she says it’d be better if someone else besides me knew and maybe kept them for me. You know, just in case I suddenly tried something stupid like swallowing the whole bottle or jumping off the rooftop. Not that I’m going to! Because I’m not! But… just in case… you know.”

Matt didn’t know. Matt had no fucking idea. How could Nicky talk like that?, how could he be so indifferent to his own mind, talking about how his psychiatrist just decided he was in danger to fucking kill himself as if he was recalling some bothersome episode from last night practice? How could he list off symptoms Matt hadn’t even realized he had like they were a fucking grocery list?!

“Andrew is good at spotting lies.” Matt jerked at Nicky’s voice. It was suddenly full of dry humour, the kind that comes with a big accomplishment you couldn’t find any pride in no matter how much you tried to. “I’ve grown good at hiding that kind of stuff from him. It’s not like you had any chance to notice.”

And wasn’t that awful in itself? Matt was speechless. 

He wished Nicky had come just to beg him to leave his homework alone and join him in pranking the other Foxes. He would have rather fail a class than face this. He felt too little and helpless to be of use.

“You want me to keep the pills for you?” he whispered, not sure why. It’s not like he didn’t hear it the first time, and he sure as Hell didn’t want to hear those words again.  _In case I suddenly tried something stupid._  God, what was in Nicky’s head?

“Yeah, uhm, if it’s okay for you?” Nicky suddenly widened his eyes, looking worried and possibly guilty. “You don’t have to, obviously! It’s okay if you don’t want to have those around, I get it! Shit, sorry. I should have thought about that, I’m sorry, I’m gonna-”

“I did cocaine.” Nicky’s hand stopped two inches from the bottle still in Matt’s hands. “These are cough pill, in comparison. I don’t feel any need to try to get high on them, if that’s what you’re scared of.” 

Matt wasn’t sure why he had said that. Pills in his pockets 24/7 sounded like a terrible idea, no matter what. Even if he honestly didn’t feel any temptation toward them, there was no doubt he could get in big ass troubles if he were caught with them, even more so as they had someone else’s name on. But Nicky was closer now and it was easy to spot the fear behind his mask, hidden in the darker folds of his irises. What he was scared of, Matt had no idea; but those demons were not the kind Nicky could escape alone, according to Bee, and he didn’t want to leave his friend to face them on his own.

“Just,-” because he had to ask, because Nicky had said  _I’ve grown good at hiding that kind of stuff from him_  and it made no sense, “-why me?”

This time, Nicky’s surprise looked genuine as he blinked down at him, still just a few inches from his face. “Oh, well, the girls are busy with their last year and stuff, Kevin is fucking tactless and Neil would never keep anything from Andrew so…” 

“You don’t want Andrew and Aaron to know.” The rest were all consequences; the reason boiled down to that. “Why?”

Nicky bit his lip again, searching Matt’s face for something he only seemed to find three long minutes later. “I don’t want Aaron anywhere near this stuff,-” he admitted, terrifyingly serious, “-and Andrew and meds haven’t gotten along since he was forced onto his own. They’re just starting to sort their lives out and I don’t want this to rock their boats, okay?”

Nicky left his lover in a different continent to come care for his cousins. Matt thought he probably shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d keep his relapse from them as well. It just made sense, because Aaron and Andrew were priorities, and always would be, no matter the cost.

 Because Nicky was an hopeless idiot.

“Okay.” 

And Matt was no better.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a bad night.

Matt woke up to the sound of a door closing loudly and he almost called Neil’s name out, but caught himself in time.

It took his sleepy brain a good half a minute to realize that, one, Neil moved from their room and his nightmares were now Andrew’s to deal with, and, two, there was now a thin line of light coming out from under the bathroom door. Checking his phone for the time watered his eyes in pain at the sudden light and made his soul weep because, really, three forty-eight in the morning is not a time that anybody was supposed to see sober.

He grunted as he fell back on the bed for a moment, cursing himself for his relatively light sleep — relatively because, dammit, Neil always managed to sneak past his radar when they were roommates — and also cursing Aaron, who’s still sleeping somewhere in his bunk above the now empty bed besides Matt’s. It left only one other option as to who woke him up, and the moment his brain realized was the moment he was also fast on his feet and stumbling to the bathroom.

Nicky had been…quiet. Well, no, that wasn’t right, but he’d been quieter. Matt doubted anybody had noticed since when in company, the man had been his usual exuberant self; but in their room, when Aaron was at Katelyn’s, he had been more subdued, claimed to be studying more often, napped longer and calling it his usual beauty sleep.

He closed the door of their room behind himself before knocking lowly on the one to the bathroom, mindful not to wake the Minyard twin.

“It’s Matt,” he whispered, because if there was one thing he could be sure of was that Nicky wouldn’t let his cousin see him like this. “Open the door?”

There was no reason for Nicky to, but the door unlocked anyway and Matt almost sighed in relief. Relief at what, he was not so sure he knew. He was not so sure he wanted to know either. Instead, he opened it just enough to sneak in and lock it again, and then he turned.

“You look like shit,” was out of his mouth before his dazed brain could consider censoring itself.

To be honest, it was the truth. Nicky’s hair reached halfway down his neck and he usually kept them untied when asleep, so now they looked like a tangled mice’s nest. He probably ran his hands through them a lot of times, Matt could see the paths of where the fingers divided the strands. Somewhen while he was coming in, Nicky had stumbled his way back to the toilet and now he was also kneeling on the floor, in boxers and a rumpled obnoxious yellow shirt with something German scribbled on. Judging from how it fell on his shoulder, oversized, Matt guessed it must be Erik’s. Secretly, he found it sweet.

Now, if Nicky’s face wasn’t wet with tears and snot and if he didn’t have strings of broken capillaries in his lucid eyes, maybe they could pretend this was a bad hungover and laugh over the scene. Take a picture to post on the Foxes group chat to add to the endless list of Nicky’s faces they use as reaction images in their conversations.

“I’m sure you meant ‘hot shit’,” Nicky mumbled, sniffling loudly and leaning with his arms on the toilet seat. Judging by the stench, he had thrown up once already, at least.

“You’re the farthest from hot shit I’ve ever seen you,” Matt said, because he was honest and nobody would believe him if he were to lie. He moved closer and ended up cross sitting on the bidet, offering a wet washcloth to a miserable Nicky. “Are you ill?”

Nicky grunted, but said nothing. He passed the washcloth on his face then his lips, and closed his eyes to breath in heavily.

Matt thought about the stench and flushed the toilet, ignoring Nicky’s sudden stiffness and a pair of black eyes running to the door. “Aaron wouldn’t wake up with Kevin yelling at him to do so, and you’re expecting him to hear you from the bedroom?”

Nicky, Matt has discovered, could be pretty irrational when it came to his cousins.

They stood kneeling on the floor for a while, who knew how long, with Nicky’s back against the heater under the window and Matt’s turned to the door. The air still smell disgusting and Nicky’s shirt looked more sweated than his gear after practice. If his hands were trembling a bit, Matt didn’t mention it. That was not the best set up for a conversation they’ve ever had, but none of them was the mood to talk, anyway, so they just waited for whatever it had been to pass.

Matt thought it may have been a nightmare. He thought about the drawer of Nicky’s desk and the letter he’d thrown in today in a hurry, after practice, pale and with his lips pulled in a thin, thin line. He thought about bringing it all up, but then he thought about Nicky’s soft “Don’t” today after the scene, and he shut down all the voices in his head.

“It’s too early in the morning for dealing with shit,” Nicky said.

Matt agreed, wholeheartedly, but still worried. A part of his brain tried to tell him to push the issue, to ask what was wrong, but the rest of it, sleepy and grumpy, simply ordered his body to mirror Nicky’s when the other stood up clumsily.  
They made their way back to their beds slowly, trying to make as little noise as they can anyway, and by the time they were back under the sheets Matt was already asleep.

 

 

He woke up again at half past four, but when he reached for the bathroom Nicky only told him to go back to sleep through the locked door.

 

 

Matt woke up for morning practice at five, and found Nicky preparing coffee in the kitchen, _smiling_.

“Good morning, sleepy heads! Dreamt of doing the straight naughty stuff?”

Matt turned just in time to catch a disgruntled Aaron flipping his cousin off before disappearing into the bathroom and slamming the door behind himself. For a moment, he reveled on the domesticity of the scene, the familiarity Nicky tried to build up every time he was with his cousin.

Then he approached Nicky where he was cooking something, eggs probably but it was hard to tell under the globe of red most-definitely-spicy sauce that had been dumped on them — Nicky was just too Mexican for flavorless normal stuff —, and leant with a hip against the counter to be as close as possible to him.

“How long have you been up?” he whispered. He could hear the sound of water going off, but he didn’t want to risk taking any chance. Nicky opened his mouth and Matt instinctively knew, after dealing with Neil, that it would be a lie. “No, let me rephrase that: have you gotten any sleep at all?”

Nicky had the guts to look offended. “Sure I did!” Matt glared at him. “In between the three times I woke up. I gave up around after four.”

 _Shit._ “Nicky.” He shook his head. Whatever scolding wouldn’t work, both because Hemmick was a stubborn little fucker and both because it wasn’t even his fault. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Nicky turned the fire off and approximatively divided the eggs in three dishes, then he threw the pan in the sink and sighed, leaning with his palms on the counter beside Matt’s hip. “I have an appointment at Bee’s before afternoon practice,” he said, though he looked a bit hesitant. “But thank you, really.”

Matt had a feeling it didn’t often happen that people _asked_ Nicky to talk. He wondered if the other’s chattering was aimed at preventing just that.

“Okay.”

The water was still going in the bathroom, so Matt fished the orange tube from the pocket of his jeans and popped a little, unassuming, white pill out. Nicky looked at it like it was some living disgusting thing he wouldn’t eat under threat of death; like someone had just told him that it was a legitimate thing to wear socks inside sandals.

(Nicky had spent one evening at the beginning of their cohabitation recounting his fights against a few of Erik’s relatives on the topic. Aaron has shook his head in disapproval while Matt had laughed the whole time. It had been a good night.)

He took it, and Matt knew it was because Nicky was far too scared of Aaron catching them to waste time debating and postponing the unavoidable. He threw it in his mouth and swallowed with his eyes closed, muttering something under his breath that sounded German and was probably either a subdue curse or a light prayer, one could never tell with him. When he looked up again, he was still being stared at, from high down, rather intently.

Matt looked almost apologetic. “Open your mouth.”

Nicky arched a brow, but obeyed, not keeping for himself a low “Bossy Boyd”. He lifted his tongue obediently when asked to, and Matt nodded after making absolutely sure he had swallowed his meds.

He was considering trying to convince Nicky to skip morning practice to catch on some sleep when Aaron chose that moment to leave the bathroom and Matt couldn’t help but jump a bit at the sudden sound from behind him. The twin looked at them, huddled close near the fires, with a frown. “What’s going on?”

Before Matt could come up with something, Nicky was already laughing loudly and picking all three dishes up with practiced ease to get them to the table. “I’m introducing Matt to they greatness of gay. Soon you and Kevin will be the only ones left! Well, until I get on with Kev, that is. Think he’ll leave Exy alone long enough for me to try?”

“You’re disgusting,” Aaron said, but he picked his fork and dig into his cousin’s eggs. Matt didn’t think he meant the words he said; he didn’t think Aaron meant most of the things he said, especially to his cousin.

Nicky faked offense and then started chattering, more and more and more, loud enough to smoother any reminder of the past night and to chase away any lingering memory of his nightmares. Loud enough to pretend that he was fine, and then louder to try to believe it himself.

And Matt slipped back into the room to hide the tube of pills in his desk before taking his turn at the bathroom and then joining the other two for breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have snippets spread across PC, block-notes, phone, and others, for at least five chapters, but none of that stuff could work for a second chapter and it was quite frustrating, let me tell you.
> 
> Whatever. Hopefully I'll update soon, since I have so much stuff ready.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt worries.

Matt had been in worse places than the third floor bathroom of Palmetto State College. Back when all it mattered was to get another shot in his vein as soon as possible, he had sneaked into far worse locations to avoid getting caught by his mom, places that now would make him retch at the mere thought. That didn’t make a college toilet his first to-go-to place to eat lunch.

He was hungry and had a mild headache after a two-hours long class of calculus, and his brain was already dreaming about going back to Fox Tower, falling face first in the bed and calling practice claiming that Nicky passed him the flu or whatever excuse the back-liner used on Wymack to justify not showing up this morning.

 _Wow, that’d be shitty_. He almost blushed in front of his own scolding, and his eyes fell on the figure hunched over the sink.

Nicky skipped morning practice. Matt hadn’t felt like ratting him out for various reasons, among which the dark bags under his eyes and the notion that the other probably hadn’t slept eight full hours in the course of the whole past week. It had been almost two months since the first time he had woken up to the other back-liner puking his guts out after a nightmare; and his feeling was that the situation wasn’t getting better at all.

That said, Nicky had never skipped practice before. When he probably would have, happily, he was in group with Kevin and the Exy-driven bastard hadn’t allowed him to; now, he had stuck to the court like a falling man to his last rope. Matt knew that Nicky was desperate to pretend that everything was alright, not for his own sake as much as to keep the twins from finding out about his situation, but he wasn’t sure it was the best course of action.

He rolled the tube of pills in his palm, absent-mindedly.

“Andrew looked funny at me, at practice,” he said. “I don’t think he bought the story of the flu.”

Nicky huffed. “My dad made me get the vaccine for the flu when I was supposed to go with him in Mexico for a missionary expedition,” he said, “Andrew knows I’ve never gotten the flu ever since.”

Matt’s nervous fidgeting with the pills stopped abruptly. “What the fuck, Nicky?! Couldn’t you come up with something better then?!" Wymack had everybody’s shots in their files; he’d spot the lie soon!

“A stupid lie for a stupid liar,” Nicky said, unfazed. He turned the water on and cupped some in his hands to throw on his face. “They’ll think I decided to skip with no reason and that I accidentally said the wrong excuse. If I used a good one, Andrew would know something serious is going on.”

 _Something serious._ Matt was unsure about what to say, and if the lump in his throat would let him speak the words even if he had them. Hearing " _something serious”_ didn’t help him at all.

Despite being the custode of Nicky’s pills, Matt was just as unaware as everybody else on the matter of what was going on. From what he gained, something bad had happened with Nicky’s parents after Aaron’s trial and the thing had degenerated into legal matters that Nicky was keeping a secret from the twins and that had caused him to have a relapse in his past suicidal tendencies, to the point that he had searched for help from Betsy and ended up under medication. He had no idea how much Wymack knew, but he highly doubted it was more than that since he had looked just as surprised as everyone else at his back-liner’s absence.

There was a good chance, Matt and Betsy were the only ones a part of the fact that _something serious_  was going on.

Nicky turned the water off and snatched a few paper towels to dry his face, but he still looked pretty bad when he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Matt watched him sigh and then fish a little tube from his backpack.

Matt thought Nicky had nothing to learn from Allison, on the matter of applying make up and foundation concealer. In a couple of minutes, there was no trace of eye bags or palish shade under the brown skin. Nicky looked ready to shot a Gay Pride advertising, what with the bright smile he was faking at his reflection and his rainbow striped T-shirt.

Nicky tended to underline his orientation, to flaunt it, even more when he was uneasy about something.

So many warning bells were frying Matt’s brain up. “Shouldn’t the pills have had some effect already, by now? It’s been weeks.”

“Not everything can kick in immediately like cocaine, Matt, didn’t you know?”

Matt recoiled. It was an involuntary reaction, but his whole body flinched anyway at the carelessness in those words. That Nicky lacked a proper brain-mouth filter was public domain, but usually he didn’t mean to, he was just unwillingly tactless. The tone of his voice now said that he had gone for ' _purposely hurtful_ '. The last time Matt saw him put up such a wall, it had been when meeting Seth for the first time and receiving his slurs, almost three years before.

Nicky’s face and his reflection were both grimacing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to... That was shitty of me. Sorry, Ma—“

“What does Bee say?” Matt interrupted him, earning himself two surprised looks and finally, _finally_ , the full attention of the real one. “How much longer? Can’t she up the dose or something?"

Nicky let out a dry laughter. “Yeah, she could up the dose and make me an happy man.” He sighed, when he all he received was a confused look. "Tryciclic antidepressants can be fatal if overdosed."

Matt consciously flinched, meaning he had instinctively attempted a gesture toward Nicky and then aborted it as a wave of nausea hit his stomach. _This Nicky_ spoke of things that were killing him like it was normal routine, like it wasn’t really touching him, like _he didn’t care_. It left him feeling scared and worried, because for as much as he could stay close to his friend, the only person who could be with Nicky 24/7 was Nicky himself. And if _this Nicky_ thought overdosing would be the best choice...

A voice in his head reminded him that there was a reason Nicky wasn’t keeping his pills himself.

"Hey, don’t look at me like that, it was just a joke! A joke!” Matt snapped back into present as a hand was waved in his face. He blinked, and found that Nicky had taken his bag, looked perfectly healthy and had his head slightly cocked to a side. There was a softness at the corner of his eyes that looked a bit like the affection he had when looking at Neil and a bit like the bone-deep tiredness he had on after a sleepless night. “Matt, I was joking, seriously. I’m still fighting this, okay? I’ve got plenty of reasons to throw back at the voices in my head, I promise."

“Really?”

Nicky’s smile was slightly less of a lie now. “Sure thing! Like, who’s going to dress Neil up and prevent him to revert back to the homeless-is-my-fashion-statement phase he was in when he came here? Or, who’s going to remind Aaron that he’s now the Straight Cousin of the family? Who’s going to remind Kevin that peanut butter is an acceptable snack and that he has a broom up his ass? People need me, man! They really do!"

Matt wondered if Nicky really meant the last words. Better than, if he really _knew_ they were real.

He made to ask, but the other had already patted him on a shoulder and left the bathroom while complaining out loud about some class or other stuff, and he had to hurry to catch up to him. They were heading in the same direction, to the parking lot so that they could go to lunch out with the girls and then to practice, but it still felt like Matt was following him.

The last conversation had left him fidgety with an uneasy feeling.

"Dark humor is not your thing, uh?” Nicky was looking ahead, smiling his fake smile as if trying out an Halloween costume, and Matt thought his voice, soft and not pushing, sounded more like his age. These windows of adult Nicky always left him confused: he was supposed to look out for him, but when these happened he felt like he could spill his guts and the other could take all his demons in stride and then hug them away. Why was he thinking about hugging Nicky? He shrugged, and the other nodded. “It’s fine, most people here don’t. Hits a bit too close to home, right?”

Matt hummed in assent, before huffing. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to chase the bad feelings away, to pull up his usual persona. There was no point in Nicky pretending to be fine, if Matt ended up giving him away. “I mean, I’m not going to cower in a corner and cry because someone made a joke about drugs, but—“

He stopped because Nicky did.

They were passing in front of the post office in campus and the lady at the desk was waving at them. “Hemmick! You’ve got a letter!”

Matt stiffened because Nicky did.

But Nicky was a better liar and shook himself out of his daze immediately, flashing his brightest smile and trotting over with fake indifference. “Oh really? Let’s hope it’s Erik’s!”

Miss Pearson rolled her eyes, most definitely used to handling letters and stuff from and for Nicky and all somehow connected with a certain German boy. She shook her head, this time, and Matt came closer just in time to read the name of the cousins’ lawyer on the back of the letter, a second before Nicky made it vanish in his bag. 

“Andrew got himself another speed ticket, dammit! I’m going to go bankrupt because of him!” Matt didn’t believe it for a second, but Miss Pearson laughed a bit, chiding Nicky for his own driving skills. It felt surreal to see him sticking his tongue out before greeting her as if nothing was wrong in the world and trotting away, with almost more hurry than how he approached her call.

He didn’t wait for Matt, and the man had to throw a fast goodbye behind his shoulders to catch up with him. There were people in the corridors, not the right place for a confrontation, but Matt tried anyway. “Nicky…"

“Tell coach my fever’s still high, would you?”

It was a door slammed in his face, Matt could recognize it, and he winced. He didn’t, _really didn’t_ , want to leave Nicky alone right now. “Come on, man, you can’t skip again, Wymack’s going to kill you.”

He bit his tongue. If Nicky were to make a joke about how that would make him happy, Matt would drag his sorry ass to practice or would get himself signed for a marathon by skipping along. He was _not_ going to leave Nicky alone if he said something like that. Fuck no. He drew the line there, and he waited to see if it would be crossed.

Nicky’s smile cracked a bit as he skirted on it, but ultimately he shook his head and receded. “Coach would know I lied this morning if I showed up now, and _that_ would get me killed. I will just get some more sleep and catch up on some homework, don’t worry.”

Except that Matt did worry. He so worried. He had every fucking right to worry, actually, and he was going to say so except they were exiting the entrance door of the building and Nicky sauntered left toward Fox Tower instead of forward to where Matt had parked his truck that morning after practice, swinging his hips and waving his hand in a greeting without even turning back to look at him. He considered chasing after him, but he doubted he’d get something other than making Nicky mad. He remembered his mean retort when they were talking about his pills, and he bit his lower lip, his hand absent-mindedly playing with the keys.

In the end, he moved to the car and jumped in, pulled the door behind himself and _cursed fucking loudly_. Then he took a deep breath, he scavenged in his pockets and pulled his phone out.

It took three rings for an answer. “ _Hello, Matthew. What can I do for you?_ ”

“Hey, Bee,” he said, looking at the Tower in the distance, the sidewalk full of people that hid the one he was interested in. “It’s about Nicky.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have another chapter ready but I might have to write one to add in between this and that. We'll see.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Name a better bonding activity than punching stuff. I'll wait.

 

It had come as a simple idea, like when sometimes he walked around in Target and caught a glimpse of something stupid and pretty trashy but it still immediately called someone to his mind.  _They would like this, they would love it, they need this._

When he was done training a few days before, he had heard the dry sound of the strap of his gloves as he opened them to pull them off and he had thought:  _Nicky could use this_. Which was probably arrogant of him, but who cared?

Nicky had been completely out of it in the past week. Though he hadn’t skipped again after that one day two weeks ago, his nightmares had all but let go and his eating schedule was just as fucked up. He was meeting with Bee twice a week already and was religiously taking his meds, but he was a far shot from ''okay''. Matt didn’t understand how could people not notice, how could they buy the story of an upcoming test or the remnants of an hungover, when to him it was so clear that the truth was far uglier. An evil and probably truthful voice in his mind wouldn’t stop telling him that he only noticed because he knew where to look; because he was the one finding Nicky every tot hours to watch him swallow a pill with a distant look, gazing at his face in the mirror as if looking for something he never seemed to find.

Matt wasn’t sure he’d be much more aware than Neil or Andrew or Dan if he didn’t know, but he knew and he saw and he couldn’t stop himself from checking on the older fox every so often.

The point was, he didn’t have any idea as to how to help because he didn’t know what he was up against. The trial against Drake had been easier to deal with: Drake had attacked Andrew and Aaron had killed him, and calling his mother for help for the twins hadn’t taken longer than a few minutes since Wymack told them. But all he knew this time was that it was somehow related to Nicky’s parents.

_He needs a break_ , he had thought, running the back of his hand on his sweaty forehead and then through his hair and spiking them all the more. 

Andrew had been looking at Nicky weirdly those days, which had brought him to say a few stupid comments - mainly appreciative of Neil - to divert the other’s attention. It was clearly just a matter of time before even those would be ignored and Minyard would start pushing for answers. Everything could be said about the Foxes' resident Monster, but not that he wasn't protective, borderline possessive, of his family. And to be honest, Matt wasn’t Nicky’s best friend by a mile, but even he knew that the other was well on his way to a psychological meltdown.

So he had picked his stuff and left the gym with half a plan in his mind, and now back here they were.

Nicky was following him with a frown, but his posture was relaxed, more so than if Andrew had been around to notice the sudden closure of him and  _Boyd_. Matt had waited for the twins to be busy with respective partners, one somewhere in the Vixens’ quarters and one far away in Columbia, before trying this out.

Nicky had put on a white tank and black gym shorts mirroring Matt’s set-up, but his hair were tied in a loose short ponytail that revealed how he had no intention of getting down to any kind of heavy exercise. Thinking back to all the talking and cajoling it had taken to get this, it was probably a big deal for him to even be out of his bed today. 

Matt had seen him struggling, the past days, and he knew that kind of tiredness didn’t come from exhaustion or training. It didn’t come from  _outside reasons_. But Nicky had been pushy in the most shocking way Matt could think of, and stood up and faked a smile and been his usual cheerful self for as long as his cousins or Neil or Kevin were around to notice.

Andrew was not the only one to use preferential treatment for his family, Matt had thought. 

Matt was not strictly a part of that family, and he was glad that was the case. Nicky needed to let his fingers open and someone to put a band-aid on the bloody half-moon red cuts he’d dug in his own palms from clenching his fists too tight.

“This place smells.”  _Prickly bastard._

“Yeah, male sweat and hormones, ugh, disgusting.” He rolled his eyes as they moved on the mat, and Nicky’s glare on him was lost until he circled the punching bag to keep it between the two of them. 

Nicky lifted a corner of his mouth, when he was disgusted. It made his lips in a funny grimace. “One word, Matt:  _deodorant_.”

Matt laughed but not as honestly as he could have, because Nicky was  _good at hiding stuff_. 

“Stop complaining and keep the bag still for me, would you?”

The gym was empty. Matt had checked the times and made sure to take the most likely hours to get some privacy, but he hadn’t dared to hope so much. The slot he had chosen actually coincided with one of his Statistics classes but he had blatantly ignored that; and Nicky was skipping too, but he hadn’t even bothered telling Matt what. Nicky’s attendance was under Bee’s discretion: he was allowed to skip as long as he called her beforehand to let her know he wasn’t exactly jumping off a bridge or stuff. " _Take it easy, Nicky,”_ Matt had heard her say it from his phone,  _“Pushing yourself too hard won’t help your family_. _”_ Nicky hadn’t been rude and instead politely said his greetings before ending the call, but to Matt it had still looked like he was hanging up on her.

Nicky’s expression said that he had hoped to use his permit for something better than an improvised boxing session. “ _How_?!”

Matt rolled his eyes and didn’t bother answering him. Instead, he put his gloves on, helping himself with his teeth as it was clear Nicky wasn’t keen in moving anytime soon. He was still grimacing.

It took an arched brow at him for Nicky to finally,  _finally_ , move closer and put his hands on the sides of the bag. It was a shitty hold, but it’d have to do for a while. The goal was to get Nicky to punch the thing, after all, not the opposite.

Matt barely got to throw the first punch. The shaking of the bag made Nicky flinch and step back with a curse half stuck between his teeth.

“Woah, hey, hey, hey! Are you trying to kill me and make it look like an accident? I already apologized for the hair in the drain!”

He let his eyes roll for a second. Nicky leaving the bathroom a mess was something they had more than once discussed about, but that steered far from a reason for Matt to want to punch him. “Don’t be an idiot, I’m not going to hit you!”

Nicky glare was suspicious and his lips pursed, but he stepped closer to the bag again. “Okay, well, just know that Erik loves  _this-,_ ” his hand gestured in wild circles around his expression, a finger pointing stubbornly, “-so if he breaks up with me because you ruined my face, you’re gonna regret it. I’ll  _cry_ , Matt. I’ll cry a lot and it will be very ugly and very, very messy.”

“Keep that thing still, Nicky,” but Matt was grinning.

He punched lightly, waiting for the tension to bleed out of Nicky’s shoulders, waiting for his grip to grow firmer and bolder, for the pout to leave room to a pensive expression. It took slightly longer than half an hour. Then he stopped.

Brown eyes searched for his in confusion, but Matt simply bit the strap of his glove and opened it before offering his hand to Nicky. “Want to give it a try?” he asked, nonchalantly.

Nicky’s grimacing upper lip came back full force just as he took a step back from the bag again. "Why?! It’s brutish!"

"And Exy is not? Are you kidding me?!"

Nicky’s glare didn’t soften, but his lips pulled in a line as he thought about an answer that clearly wouldn’t come to his mind at the moment. Matt felt only slightly smug about it before remembering why he had put that plan together to begin with.

He sighed, laying one open palm on the leather of the bag to stop it from dangling slightly. It was warm, there where his punches had found their mark. "Look, Nicky, I know you don’t want to talk about what’s happening-,” Wrong words. He knew because Nicky was back to tension, from zero to ten in less than a second, surely a record, "-but you can’t keep bottling all up. You need an outlet,-“ he thought about Exy and corrected, "- one that does  _not_  involve your cousins."

Nicky placed a hand dramatically on his chest. "I have an outlet! It’s called  _being pretty_!"

"Oh my gosh, are you for real?” Matt hated the dramatics, because he couldn’t tell if they were Nicky’s real thoughts or if it was just another convoluted mask. He was also striving not to call God in anymore, if he could help it.

Nicky ignored his annoyance to nod solemnly. "I know. All this prettiness sounds too good to be true. I understand, Matt. Don’t worry, you’re pretty cute yourself!"

Matt gave that approach up. Nicky was good at annoying people into leaving him alone; Kevin had seen that skill at work plenty when he  _still thought_ he could force his teammates to eat healthily. 

Instead, he whispered. His voice carried gentle in the empty gym. "Try throwing a couple punches, at least? Come on, we woke up at the crack of dawn anyway, let’s make it worth it, at least."

" _You_ woke me up at the crack of dawn, I was perfectly content sleeping, thank you.” It was a very  _Nicky_ statement, one that Matt almost reacted with a glare to, but it was just a second before something somber fell on his face. "Boxe is just not for me.”

There was more to that sentence, Matt was sure. It showed in how Nicky’s eyes wouldn’t leave the bottom of the punching bag, low enough not to meet the other’s eyes but high enough to not call attention. A careful display of disinterest that was too good to be real. The perfect hiding spot for a tiny little secret.

"…Okay.”

Nicky’s eyes lifted immediately, searching Matt with something that was in equal parts surprise and daring hope. “Okay?”

Matt was not going to push. He wanted to help, not to turn into the umpteenth person to look out for.

He shrugged. "Okay. It’s not Neil’s thing either after all he’s been through, so I was hoping for a sparring partner,-“ Threw it in, both a justification and an offer, a chance at opening up and a chance at letting stuff out without a single word. Matt hoped it was enough and it’d be picked up on, yet he added, "-but it’s fine! I can always ask some of the freshmen or someone from the boxe team."

Nicky was no idiot. His face softened as he faced the options he was given, but it was bittersweet like a goodbye kiss. In a moment, his expression was full of dramatic shock and exaggerated liveliness. "You stay away from the children, you oversized beanpole of muscles! Are you trying to kill the pups before they even make it to the court? So cruel, Matt!"

Matt only clicked his tongue, this time. He was  _not_ going to push. “Shut up, I’m not going to kill them!"

"Sure you are!” Nicky’s eyebrows rose and fell a couple times. "Kill 'em with kindness."

It was probably the light in Nicky’s eyes that did it. The gratefulness he was expressing and the fingertips gently touching the leather of the bag.

Matt snorted and Nicky followed him laughing shortly after. Their voices echoed against the walls and called one of the janitors to check on whatever could be going on. They both gestured at him that all was fine, but couldn’t stop chuckling enough to do so by words. Still shaking his head and smirking, Matt fastened his glove back on his hand. Nicky watched him do so, but pulled his hand away from the bag.

It was slow, deliberate, and called attention in a subtle request. Nicky didn’t look at Matt, but stared at his hands.

"There was all this stuff they made us do. Football and Boxe and others.” Matt blinked, confused. The sudden declaration left him lost on the subjects of the picture for a second, before Nicky went on. "They said they were manly, and it was better to change all our habits to make sure we didn’t slip back in sin by association. Exy wasn’t allowed because girls and boys play together and that’s recipe for perversions to grow. I think the matches we played were the most physical touch I got until I went to Germany."

Matt was not sure what to say. He knew about the camp, because he had been there the year before Neil came along, when Nicky had to bear the insults of some asshole in the upperclassmen from back then; when Andrew was ready to kill but Nicky laughed in the guy’s face and told him he needed to step up his insults if he wanted them to work on him.  _I’ve had worse_ , he had let slip during an argument. Dan had gone to check on him later, because he was a monster but still a teammate, and Nicky had been stone cold.  _Conversion Camp is not exactly the same as playing with the boy-scouts._ They had left it at that, because Andrew had been one step from tripping someone down a flight of stairs and Nicky had to be pushed second in priorities.

At some point, it had just been a forgotten thing. Nicky was clearly fine and very gay, so whatever he had been through couldn’t have influenced him much. ( _Right?_ )

"I’m sorry, Nicky.” He was not sure if it was for now or for the past. It had been hard to figure out where he stood, lately. The girls had yet to leave, but he was already gravitating around a new balance watching it settle itself. Aaron and Kately, Neil and Andrew, and Kevin and Wymack awkwardly stumbling into their new family. That left him and Nicky feeling like balloons barely attached with a string, wondering if the others were even aware of pulling them along or if it was just something that happened because they were tied to their wrists, something not cared much about and almost not remembered anymore.

Graduation sucked, and stubborn clingy pasts even more so.

"Nothing you can do to change that, right?” Nicky shrugged, indifferent to his own pain. Neil had once said Andrew reacted to offenses to his family more than to those against his own person, but Matt thought Nicky was not much different. "It’s fine,” he said, smiling gently. "I’m an Exy player with handsome teammates and an hot European boyfriend oversea. I’m doing pretty well, if I can say so myself!"

Except Matt was fiercely aware of Nicky’s pills bottle in his bag and the falsity of the uncaring wrinkle around his eyes. Nicky was only smiling honestly when the dimples in his cheeks showed up, otherwise he was lying. It had been a useful trick to learn, Matt had picked it up from watching the other Skype with Erik.

Speaking of which.

"Hey, Nicky?"

Nicky blinked once. “What?"

Matt fixed his gloves and went back in position to resume training. "Erik wouldn’t break up with you just because you ruined your pretty face. He wants in for the whole deal."

Nicky hesitated, still as he rarely ever was, and his lips twitched for a moment before he answered, “Yeah, for my hot body and my gorgeous ass,” and threw in a wink before he turned to leave. It was okay, though.

There were dimples in his cheeks, this time around.

Matt still made a mental note, as he threw a punch more and listened to steps fading in the background, to try to steal Erik’s number. Just to stay on the safe side.


	5. Chapter 5

_“Matthew, everything that Nicky tells me during our sessions is strictly confidential. I know you are helping him with his medicines and I am glad you realize how important this is, but it’s still only up to Nicky to decide what he wants to share, both with you and, or, with me.”_

Matt sighed. He had admittedly never put much hope in the session he booked with Betsy, but the words she said when he tried to steer the conversation toward Nicky’s issues made him feel quite more guilty than expected. He hadn’t been trying to breach his privacy or whatever, he didn’t mean to stick his nose in things that didn’t regard him, but he was _worried_.

Nicky had received a total of three letters from his lawyer, all in the span of a few weeks. He had no idea if it was a good or bad thing, to be honest, but his sleep pattern had deteriorated further and Matt had caught him eating meagre meals or skipping altogether when the twins weren’t around to notice. Twice already he had seen him hesitate for almost five full minutes before taking his pills.

The faint echo of music pumping somewhere in the empty study rooms couldn’t distract him from his screaming thoughts, and the Friday night with Dan locked up in the girls’ room for an _emergency meeting_ called in by Allison had dragged him to his room to find some solitude. Aaron was out with Katelyn and Andrew had stolen Neil, the car and apparently also the house in Columbia, leaving both Nicky and Kevin stranded and the latter quite pissed. Last he saw, his majesty was headed to the party that the Vixens had organized for celebrating passing one of the prelims in their own competitions.

Nicky, instead, was coming out of the bathroom in that very moment. Matt could see a couple of the lotion bottles he used fallen on the side of the sink and a crumpled shirt half falling out of the laundry basket, and he sighed again, this time resignedly. The day Nicholas Esteban Hemmick managed to leave the bathroom clean was the day he went to Andrew’s room and kissed him on the mouth. Which would probably made it also his last day on Earth.

Nicky was wearing sweatpants and a baggy jumper, both in tame shades of gray, and had his hair kept in a messy bun. It was weird, to see him so un-polished, and it made Matt tense a bit and sit up so his back was against the wall. His bed frame creaked slightly.

When Nicky plopped himself on his own bunk, one arm thrown on his eyes, Matt bit his lower lip.

“Not going out tonight?” he asked, trying to remember the last time Nicky accepted an invite to hang out. He came up blank.

The man huffed loudly. “I’ve been betrayed, Matt. Abandoned by my own family. At least I can understand Andrew, he’s out somewhere smooching Neil, but Aaron? He’s on a date with Katelyn! And don’t get me wrong, she’s an adorable girl, but he’s preferring her and the straights’ naughty over his gay cousin? That’s homophobic!”

Matt rolled his eyes, but threw his backpack on the floor and got up to plop himself on the rotating chair of his desk instead. The thing squeaked ominously and earned him a worried glance from Nicky, but he ignored it. He was fairly sure it won’t break, anyway, and this way he was closer to the other.

“What about Kevin?” He hoped he sounded casual and not testing. _It’s all up to Nicky_ , yeah, sure, but Nicky didn’t make the best decisions at the moment.

It wasn’t the right thing to ask, apparently, because Nicky rolled on his stomach on the mattress with a grunt and dived his face in his pillow. “Kevin is cheating on Thea with his one true love,—” he said, his words muffled, “—and I’m considering texting her a picture of him with the PC on his legs and tell her he’s masturbating to a Jeremy Knox sex tape.”

“ _Nicky!_ ”

“What? It’s the truth! More or less.”

Matt shook his head, but it was good-humoredly. “He’s watching Exy?

Finally, Nicky lifted himself on his elbows to look at him directly. “USC again, Matt! There’s only so much fan-boying I’ll allow before calling it an unhealthy obsession and incite Betsy on him!”

Matt chuckled, silently taking note of the bags under the other’s eyes, and then stared as Nicky fell face down into his pillow again. He looked a bit worse for wear, but not as bad as that time he found him at night, so maybe things were getting a bit better? Maybe the pills were finally starting to work.

It was impossible to see if Nicky had lost weight, what with how little he seemed to eat, because he was once more swimming into Erik’s bigger clothes. For a soothing habit, it was happening quite often. 

Thinking about Erik sent Matt down another lane of thoughts, one that he had been tentatively exploring since the cohabitation with Nicky began and that he had found himself on more often since the matter with the pills started, for some reason.

“Remember when we first met?,” he asked, before he could change his own mind on the matter, “When you came in the room waltzing and took one second to decide you liked me so you spent all that time bickering with Dan because you wouldn’t stop staring and she was jealous as hell?”

It was a mild way to put what had happened that day, and Nicky laughed, turning on his side and straining his neck upward to look at him. “Oh, yes! She hated my guts, didn’t she?”

Matt wouldn’t say _hate_ , but surely that hadn’t been the best moment for those two. “Did you really like me?”

Nicky arched a brow at him. “Are you fishing for compliments, Boyd? You know you’re one fine piece of man, i didn’t think you’d need me to spell it out for you.”

It wasn’t what he was expecting to hear, and surely the warmth on his face wasn’t how he’d expected to react. “Uh, thanks, but that’s not…uhm… you were already dating Erik, right?”

“Matt,” There was a melancholic note in Nicky’s voice, though his smile now looked softer, a kind sunset shade of his usual provocative one, “I look, maybe I kiss some, but I don’t go any further than that. Are you cute? Yeah. Did I like your looks? Yeah. Was I serious? Nah.” He shrugged, for what he could half pressed in the mattress, “I may have liked you, but I already loved Erik.”

“Then why did you…?”

“I made a statement. I stated that I was very gay and I was here to stay and that I would not bow my head and let them kick me around because of that. Honestly? In that locker room, you were the only one who looked like he wouldn’t have thrown a slur back at my flirting. You were just the easiest choice.”

Matt could understand that much. Despite Nicky’s plan, it had taken point-two seconds for Seth to call Nicky the f-slur and declare he wouldn’t change in the same locker room with him. Reggie and Juan and Dwayne, the three upperclassmen Matt shared the room with back them, were all friends of the white powder that had plagued his life; and Matt was living on the girls’ couch to avoid them. Nicky had seen the poisonous snake and went in to grab it, kill or die style.

That Matt from back then didn’t have an once of the courage of that Nicky.

“So,” he tried to ignore the embarrassment coloring his voice. He knew from Aaron’s complaint that Nicky talked a lot about his boyfriend when he was with the rest of the monsters, but with the upperclassmen all he said were superficial and general things, nothing of importance. And yet, if they were still together after all those years, it couldn’t be as mundane and easy as it seemed from those stories. “Erik and only Erik? The love of your life and all the romantic stuff?”

It was weird and yet amusing, just a tiny bit endearing, to see Nicky blush at the question. His skin darkened even more and he averted his eyes to fix them on the ceiling, then he huffed. “Uh, yeah, well, you know. Hopefully. After college, when the twins will be settled, for as much as two like them can. Andrew and Aaron have a bit of precedence.”

“Because they’re family?”

“Because I took them in,” Nicky said, and his voice was suddenly serious, once more turning him into the man he was, barely younger than Renee. “My dad said I’d just lead them to sin with me and damn us all to hell; he only let me took them because he was sure they were already lost anyway, Andrew with his attitude and Aaron with his addiction. They weren’t exactly up for his preacher shit.” The smile on his lips was a bit tired but mostly fond. “I ought to take care of them, now.”

Matt swallowed the lump he felt at the thought of Nicky’s father, and settled for a tentative smile of his own. “And here I thought Andrew was the dad of the lot.”

Nicky snorted. “Please, with all the ice-cream he eats? He’s the five years old brother who blackmails you into doing shit for him. And Aaron is the Straight Cousin. You have no idea how satisfying saying that is!”

He could imagine. “And what are you?”

Nicky blinked at the top bunk above him. Matt was starting to notice that tic, it usually meant Nicky was getting lost somewhere in his head. “Uhm, the fuck-up? Heard there’s one in every family.”

“No.” It came out harsher than Matt was trying to, but he didn't dwell on it. He didn't know what depression looked like, what suicidal voices speaking sounded like, but he recognized a bad path when he saw it and he was not going to let Nicky throw himself down there. He ignored the surprised look he got and instead blurted, “You’re the crazy gay uncle in a tacky shirt.”

“Excuse _you_ , my shirts are great! Take it back, right this moment, Boyd!”

Matt didn't. “Is Kevin the vodka aunt?”

Nicky’s eyes sparkled and Matt thought, _this guy is a menace_. “Uh, I like the way you think, Boyd. Can Neil be the innocent son of the neighbors? He can play with crayons with Andrew, I promise my boy will be good!”

Matt almost coed at the scene his mind conjured. “I don’t know, what if your boy bullies my baby?”

“Lies! My boy is a blond angel, he’d never do such a thing! On the other hand, you know what they say about red-heads…"

And Matt laughed, and his chair squeaked annoyingly, and Nicky did too — both things — and it was okay. It would get better. They would just deal with it slowly, as things came and Nicky learnt to open up for real, and stuff would be okay.

Matt didn't think about the lawyer’s letters in the drawer of Nicky’s desk.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin has zero tact, and that's more of a problem than usual.

 

 

The first time Wymack benched him in practice, Matt took his time looking at Nicky as he settled in his place beside his cousin.

Nicky wasn't the best player by far. Differently from Andrew, who had a bottomless natural talent for the game, and Aaron, who played as a mean to get himself all the way to a college degree, Nicky's only reason to play was because Andrew got him a scholarship with the twins and because he'd always jump at every chance to do some kind of bonding activities with his cousins. He played because the Foxes' roster was thinner than a needle.

Matt wasn't sure if Nicky cared about being in college for any other reason than being with the twins. Did he even _like_ Exy? He liked to show off and to win and his family, but before college Nicky had quit playing in middle school, and he’d never shown any kind of interest in the sport outside of practice time. Did he care about his major? He wasn't attending University in Germany before coming back to the States, but whether it was for lack of means or disinterest, Matt had no idea.

He tried to paint Nicky as some kind of manager or accountant, but he only ended up grimacing. Nope. Not him.

So he watched Nicky on the court, the weakest link of their line up, and he strived not to steal a glance at the freshmen beside him. With a couple of exceptions, the new foxes were normal, kind of indifferent to him after the thick bonds that grew the past year; and the exceptions, Jack and Sheena, were pure assholes whom Matt was happy to have nothing to do with. They’ve been trying to get along for months, but there had been too many missteps against Neil for any of the original foxes to feel much accepting.

On court, Nicky failed at keeping Kevin in check and Andrew only barely managed to save the ball. It was a great action for the goalie, but a poor play on the defense’s part and Aaron’s expression showed he wasn’t satisfied either. Kevin shouted something from the other side of the court, but the plexiglass walls muffled it and the only clear thing in the whole exchange was Nicky’s kiss blown his way.

Matt’s attention shifted from him to the goal, but flew back on the strikers when it almost met two blazing eyes.

Andrew was on to something. Specifically, he was on to glare at Matt so hard he was going to drill a hole in his skull. It made him want to say goodbye to Dan.

There was no doubt that the monster's newfound interest in him went side to side with Nicky's little moments of weirdness that betrayed something deeper going on. And there was just as much doubt that if he couldn't get answers from his cousin, Andrew would search for them elsewhere; in the specific, from Matt himself. Neil had noticed this new glare contest, and he'd shoot Matt a questioning look every now and then. Matt always just shrugged, as if in the dark about the whole matter, and the only time Andrew caught him faking unawareness his glares had leveled up two notches.

Matt watched Neil passing Nicky - _easily, so easily, Nicky was so slow and tired and thin and_ \- and shooting at goal only to have Andrew slam the ball to the other end of the court. In game, that would be one hell of a good move; here in practice, considering they were playing with one goal only, defense against offense, it was a red flag about his annoyance spiking. Matt gave him another five minutes before he started aiming directly to other players, probably the freshmen.

Here, Matt felt a bit guilty. He hadn't really bothered with the new recruits, what with Nicky's mess and all. Literally all he knew was that Jack and Sheena were assholes and had it out with Neil for some reason. That hadn't really prompted him to try and get closer, actually.

Much to his bitter amusement - he should have egged Allison for a bet -, Andrew aimed a ball at Jack's helmet exactly four minutes later. Renee sighed at his side and Wymack cursed under his breath before slamming a punch against the plexiglass.

It was almost time to end practice anyway.

Wymack's tirade was short before he sent them to cool off, and the whole team was buzzing with nervous energy by the time they headed to the locker room. Matt sided with Dan but kept an eye on Nicky as he tried to keep up an endless string of chatters with an uncooperative Aaron.

"We're not going to win like this!” Kevin zeroed on Neil as if it was his personal fault that the rest of the team wasn't on par with the two of them. Matt turned his back to the scene, knowing fully well how this would end - with Andrew, always -, but he didn't make it to the showers before Kevin turned his stress on other targets. "Jack needs to fucking work with us there, Andrew needs to stop cutting us when he gets bored and Nicky needs to stop fucking around and start to pull his weight!"

Matt understood, to a level. Kevin's and Neil's lives depended on how well they did on court and the winter season hadn't been as good as the past year, the team too fragmented around the new gears in their clock. Next week's game against the Ravens wasn't helping anyone, either. Still, Matt had a sinking feeling about whom Kevin would go after.

"What the fuck even was today? It was pathetic!” Nicky was standing in front of the bench, hands roaming in his bag as if he couldn't find something. He didn't answer, but Kevin didn't need encouragement. "What the fuck is wrong with you?! First you skip practice and now you can't even do your job?! The Ravens have not sunk so low that we can afford to take it easy!"

Nicky stopped pretending he could avoid this and instead glared. "Fuck off, Kevin, it was weeks ago! I missed practice _once_ , for fuck's sake!" 

"You couldn't afford it, clearly!" Kevin hissed. "Or what is it? You already put half-assed effort in practice as it was, but today was shit! What, we have subs now so you can't bother playing seriously now that you're replaceable?!"

"Enough, Kevin!"

Matt saw the word hit and kill in the fraction of second it took Kevin to spell it.

He would agree, normally, that Nicky was their weakest link on court. Everybody knew it, Nicky himself knew it. And Kevin had never been famous for his gentle ways, so they all were used to his harshness, but with Nicky's condition...

_Replaceable._  Fuck. That was the last thing Nicky needed to hear.

Matt had spoken out instinctively, and now he sustained Kevin's glare with a matching one of his own. "You're an asshole and nobody here is on your level, we _get_  it. Now shut the fuck up."

Shit, he could feel Andrew's eyes on him.

The freshmen had fallen silent as Kevin grew louder and now they were all staring, confused at the rising hostility. Some of them looked at Neil or the twins as if they expected them to stand in. They clearly had yet to learn about the dynamics in the group.

Again, Matt thought, last year he would have let Nicky deal with Kevin alone. They were both monsters, their business was theirs to deal with and anyway everybody knew that Nicky wouldn't listen to Kevin no matter what. Now, he wondered if last year, before the relapse, it had been any easier or if he had just been that good of an actor.

“What’s going on here? If you maggots have any energy left to fight, you can go back on court.”

Matt and Nicky backed down as soon as Wymack’s frame entered the locker room. Kevin fumed for a bit more, but eventually stomped off to his own locker when Neil cleared his throat with fake indifference. 

If Andrew was staring - _he was_ , his eyes were silent sledgehammers against his spine -, Matt made sure not to notice as he quickly ducked around Kevin and ran off to the girls’ side. Allison arched a refined brow at his blatant retreat, but he kissed Dan’s cheek and she took pity on him.

“You two sweethearts go on without me,” she chirped. She had her arms around his waist and her voice suggested she needed the suite empty for a couple hours. 

Renee, bless her heart, smiled at them. “I need to restock my supply of hair-dye, anyway,” she said, and Allison’s eyes shone in spite of herself.

They reached the parking lot as a group, and Matt saw that Nicky was already boarding Andrew’s Maserati, so he felt not really guilty for slipping with Dan in his truck as soon as the other two girls had hopped toward Allison’s Porsche. His relief vanished in the two-point-zero seconds it took Dan to cross her arms and give him The Stare.

He sighed tiredly. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why? You’re suddenly applying for a pass into Andrew’s lot?”

“I thought we were past the two-factions thing. Neil would be disappointed, you know.”

Dan rolled her eyes. “Neil is not blind, and neither am I. What happened earlier? We could hear Kevin yelling from our locker room.”

“Just the usual.” Matt still didn’t turn the car on. He waited and stared at he door to the court. He didn’t like lying to Dan; he couldn’t remember the last time he had to do it, and the pills in his pocket waited a ton even though they weren’t his. “He’s stressed for the match with the Ravens and he crossed a line.”

He could notice by the corner of his eye that Dan’s posture was softening a bit, even though rather than relaxed she now looked a bit shagged. “He went for Nicky?”

“How do you—?”

“Oh, _please_. This is still my team, I know my Foxes.” She frowned. “What’s going on with him? He’s… _weird_. Sometimes he looks just disconnected from the rest of us, he keeps quiet for so long it freaks me out. And you’ve been glued to his side for more than a month, now; you can fool the others, but _I_ notice when my boyfriend is paying more attention to someone else than me.”

Matt groaned. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I can’t tell you and I don’t want it to become something between us.”

Dan arched a brow at him in a way that made him painfully aware of all the time she spent with Allison. “Okay.”

He was suddenly glad he wasn’t driving because he would be probably steering off the road. “ _Okay_? Just like that?” She rolled her eyes at him and he felt his lips pull in a smile. “I love you, did I mention that?"

“Never enough,” she said, before pushing forward on the manual stick to meet him in a chaste kiss that lasted far too little for his tastes. “Will you tell me if the two of you get into troubles? _Neil-level_ troubles? _Mob-involved_ troubles?”

Matt laughed.

 

 

He drove them back to the Tower and slipped into the girls’ rooms after Dan. When he got out, a couple hours later, it was to Allison loudly banging on their door and loudly demanding she found no naked people when she got in.

Renee had a huge bag of hair-related stuff in her arms and a mischievous glint in her gentle eyes that said she would try — and probably manage because, let’s be serious, who could say no to _Renee_? — to use it on anyone she could. Matt slipped away before she could ask him, not because he didn’t like her handiwork but because it was approaching the time for Nicky’s dose and a dye took far too much time.

Andrew, Neil and Kevin were probably still holed up in their own room, and Aaron was either at the library or with Katelyn — the two weren’t mutually exclusive —. When Matt entered the room, he was confident he’d find Nicky alone.

He wasn’t expecting to find him as he did.

Nicky was sitting on the floor on the bathroom doorstep, his back against the frame and his knees up to his chest, face hidden between his arms and hands clenched on huge chunks of hair. The shivers in his shoulders said he was crying, but he wasn’t making a sound. Beside him on the floor was his phone, face down.

“Nicky!” He didn’t make show of hearing Matt at all, he didn’t even react when the bigger man ran in front of him and knelt down to reach for his hands. “Nicky, what happened?!” 

It took him three tries to pry Nicky’s fingers open and get a look at his face, and he was met with a bitten lip and tears streaks on hollow cheeks. He ran his hand through the other’s hair and _that_ ripped a sob from him.

“Hey. Hey. Nicky? Come on, man, talk to me. What happened?”

The entrance door was unlocked still, and Matt distantly worried about someone walking in, but the thought was fleeting in front of a bigger worry, and disappeared completely when Nicky’s voice reached him. 

“ _I want to go home._ ” Nicky sobbed again. “Matt. Matt, I want to go _home_.”

Matt’s heart clenched. “Hey. Is this because of what Kevin said? You know he’s got no tact at all, he doesn’t really—,“ but Nicky shook his head and his hands, still firmly held in Matt’s, trembled desperately.

“’s not that,” he sniffed. He took a moment, gulped, shook again. Matt looked at him struggle, and strived not to interrupt and just shove a pill down his friend’s throat. “I love the twins, Matt,” Nicky said. “I love them, I truly do, I’d do anything for them. And I love Neil, and I love that grumpy ass that's Kevin. And I love you and Dan and, God, I love Renee so much, I even love Allison though she’s a catty bitch. But I want to go  _home_. I love all of you, guys, but I want to _go home_. I want to go home, I want to go home, I— _I want out_.”

“Don’t say that shit, Nicky. Don’t you dare say that.” Matt shoved down the panic that mounted into him at those words — _I want out, I want out, I want out_ —. He left one of Nicky’s hands to search in his pocket and he fumbled with the lid of the tube for a moment. It fall on the floor and he couldn’t bring himself to care as his fingers did numbers to pull a pill out without making a mess. “Come on, man. Take this and then we can move from here, okay? I can call Betsy or we can talk. It’s okay, come on.”

Nicky didn’t oppose resistance. Still trembling and crying he let Matt push the pill past his lips and then swallowed loudly. He let himself being dragged to his feet and then, slowly, to his bed, where in fell and curled. Matt tried to get his temperature by placing the back of his free hand, the one that wasn’t still wrapped around Nicky’s, but he was still holding the open tube of pills and he had to give up before he spilled them all.

“I’m calling Betsy, okay?” he whispered, trying to be as soothing as possible, but Nicky didn’t seem to have heard him. Still, Matt stood up, slipped his hand free and then almost ran out of the room. He grabbed the tube lid from the floor and closed the bottle, then he brought his hands to his lips and bit hardly into them.

_I want out._

He could feel Nicky slipping away from him even as he went back to his side with his phone to his ear.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The worst is almost over, I promise.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the elephant in the room.

 

Matt woke up the next morning in Nicky’s bed.

They had skipped dinner, too busy trying to put together the shards of Nicky’s breakdown, and sighed in relief as Aaron had texted them he’d be out on a date with Katelyn. At a certain point, Matt had laid down too and now he felt his arm tingle with lack of blood, but at least Nicky looked peaceful in his sleep, head pillowed on his shoulder. No nightmare had plagued them for once, which was a little blessing when Matt’s head was still pounding with last night’s word.

_I want out_. As light filtered through the window they forgot to close, Matt took the sentence apart in his brain and shivered. He wasn’t sure what exactly Nicky wanted out of, but fear was a tricky thing, turning mice in tigers and shadows in monsters. 

There was some rustling in the kitchen, but he didn’t acknowledge it. If Aaron had seen them, he probably had something to say on the matter, and Matt wasn’t in the mood to listen to it.

Lightly, he ran his fingers through Nicky’s hair to fix them a bit, and the man stirred but otherwise didn’t move.

Matt didn’t think Kevin’s words had been the real cause of the breaking. Sure, Kev was an ass most of the time, when Exy was involved, but Nicky had thick skin when it came to him; they bickered a good 23/6 of their time, it was basically how they showed their affection for each other. Somewhere in his mind, no matter how much of a miserable place it was, Nicky  _had_ to know his family cared for him. He had to. ( _He did, didn’t he?_ ) So the question was on what had exactly happened, in the time Matt had been with Dan, to make Nicky wish to  _go back home_.

Which one even was Nicky’s home? Definitely not his parents’. Maybe the house in Columbia, where he lived with the twins? Or maybe Germany, Erik and the life he had there; maybe that was Nicky’s home. Matt wasn’t sure.

Matt wasn’t sure even Nicky himself knew, exactly, last night. 

Something fell and clattered on the floor outside the room and Aaron cursed so loud his voice carried through the door, making Matt jerk out of his thoughts. Nicky grunted at his pillow so rudely hitting on his jaw, and he frowned before forcing his eyes open, not without a struggle.

“I think Aaron died,” Matt said, in lieu of a ' _good morning_ ’.

Nicky groaned again, rolled on his stomach and proceeded to smash his face into his real pillow, muttering unintelligibly into the cloth. Matt hummed an assent.

They took their time getting up and woking the kinks out of their bodies, quite annoyed at finding out that college beds played favorites with couples the size of Neil and Andrew but clearly hated on tall ones like them. Nicky sneaked into the bathroom first and Matt dug around the mess they left of the room to find both their phones. For a moment he panicked, looking for the pills, before remembering he shoved them in the drawer of Nicky’s bedside table.

He didn’t mean to flicker Nicky’s screen on when he finally found his phone under a sweater, he must have swiped without realizing, but the light hit his face and he froze as the name  _Luther_ stared at him from beside the red icon of a missed call.

_Seven_ missed calls. Ranging from last afternoon to the past night. 

“Matt.” He flinched, ripped from the frenzy of his restless thoughts, and when he looked up Nicky stood like the eye of the storm, unmovable. The phone weighted a ton or something; Matt returned it. “I’m not going to pick up.”

“I know.” Matt really did. Nicky had a high resistance when it came to himself but almost zero when it came to the twins’ pain; it seemed like it ran in the DNA of all the cousins, to be much more interested in protecting the other two than themselves. Nicky’s parents had hurt Andrew, and that was the deal breaker. They were even saved with their proper names in their son’s mobile, no  _mom_ and  _dad_ , not anymore. “Never thought you would."

Nicky nodded a bit, playing with the phone in his hand, and Matt wanted to ask, wanted to know what exactly was going on, why Luther's and Maria’s numbers weren’t blocked, why Nicky wouldn’t tell the twins about it, all, all, all.

But Aaron poked his head from the door and Nicky’s face lit up in a smile that was only half fake when he met his cousin’s arched brow. “Is any of you going to come out for breakfast or—“

“I can’t speak for Mr Boyd here, but I’m happy to say I’m gay! Do I get breakfast, now?” It sounded convincing, terribly so, in its exuberant cheerfulness. Matt wanted to gag.

“ _Don’t,_ ” Aaron hissed, but Nicky stretched to ruffle his hair and for once the twin was too slow — or not interested — in moving out of reach. 

_Keep it together, Matthew Donovan_ , he scolded himself, trying to recall his mother’s most offended voice, as the cousins left the room together. He straightened himself, ran a hand through his hair and grabbed some clean clothes from a drawer before going to the bathroom. He took a few minutes to collect himself and then, finally, joined the others in the living room.

His concept of  _others_ had been Nicky and Aaron, but somehow he wasn’t  _that_ surprised in finding Andrew and Neil slouched on the couch and Kevin nagging at Aaron’s and Nicky’s topping choices for—

“Pancakes?” Matt didn’t even know someone outside of Nicky could cook, in the whole monsters crew.

“Plain, bland, disgustingly flavorless pancakes,” Aaron quoted, with a glare in his cousin’s direction that worked like a bibliography at the end of a thesis. Nicky’s hands didn’t falter as they poured toppings over his share.

“Leave my life alone,  _Michael_.”

“We have practice in an hour and you two are going to puke your way through it if you eat all that shit."

“Fuck you,  _Esteban_.”

Nicky let out an offended gasp, though Matt wasn’t sure whom it was aimed at. “Scandalous!"

Andrew threw in an half-heartened threat to leave, but nobody paid him any mind since Neil hadn’t moved an inch from his spot. Matt almost laughed at how surreal all of this would look to his self from the past year. Andrew was the pure definition of  _smitten_.

Kevin and Aaron moved their bickering to the floor besides the couch, somehow ignoring the couple as if they were on a different plane of existence. Matt took his chance to put the morning pill in Nicky’s hand and watch him swallow it. The man, for himself, didn’t complain, but the action looked so mechanical and empty it wasn’t reassuring at all.

Matt looked at him fidget with his fork, a huge plate in front of him, and bit his lip for a second. “If you finish the pancakes, I’ll do the Lion King thing with Neil,” he said.

Nicky gave him a weird look, and Matt just pulled out his phone and searched on YouTube for the soundtrack of the movie. Nicky snorted.

“Wait for Andrew to be in a spiritual retreat on the Himalaya, before doing that."

“Doing what?"

For a moment, only one, Matt thought he was dead, because his luck in the last few days had given him all reasons to expect that, but then he realized it wasn’t Andrew who had eavesdropped on them. Neil just cocked his head to a side, questioning, two plates in his hands.

On one dish, there was a couple of pancakes with fresh blueberries on top and around. On the other, there were more than half a dozen pancakes, an unholy amount of honey, some chocolate and three scoops of ice-cream.

Nicky looked at Matt. Matt looked back. They bursted out laughing under Neil’s confused and half-freaked out gaze.

 

 

It was a cozy day off, all in all. Matt had texted Dan a simple “ _Nicky 911_ ” and she’d sent back that she’d be going out with the girls and to text her if he needed anything. It was a huge relief to have her on his side, there was no denying it. 

They played video games and ignored all and every sport channel, much to Kevin’s annoyance. A bit of prodding on Matt’s part and the constant studying glare of Andrew pushed Nicky to take up lunch duty in an attempt to prove he was  _fine_ and perfect happy as usual, no need to worry, absolutely not. It worked little on Matt, and he suspected even less on Andrew if the way Neil kept to steal worried glances to him was anything to go by.

Matt had no idea what Neil was picking up from his boyfriend’s impassive expression, but he’d long since learnt Neil had probably a bachelor degree in  _Deciphering of the Andrew Minyard_.

After a strong scent of spices filled the whole room, the guys gravitated around Nicky’s pots and pans with curious and hungry glances, forcing him to defend his creation with experienced swings of a wooden spoon. Aaron glared when his wrist was hit, but Matt caught him laying a hand on Nicky’s small back as he passed behind him to gather plates for everyone.

At the touch, Nicky froze for a second, and then his head snapped toward the twin, eyes wide and mouth gaping. Aaron went on his way and didn’t notice — or pretended not to — as he joined Kevin to stop him from complaining about the amount of calories they’d be ingesting just today. “I don’t remember reading vodka on the diet plan, Day, so shut the fuck up."

Nicky was still staring as if he’d just witnessed a miracle or the birth of his first child. Matt swallowed his bile. “He cares for you,” he said, too low for the others to pick up, as he started stirring something in a pot just to give himself something to do. Nicky’s expression was so confused and shocked it broke something in his chest. “It doesn’t have to be a one-way street, you know.”

The thing in Nicky’s pan started to emit a weird fuzzing sound, and that shook the man out of his trance enough to lower the flame and let out a low course. He stared at his handiwork for a moment, but it didn’t look like he was really seeing it, or bothering with thoughts about lunch at all. Matt watched him hum something under his breath as he scratched at his neck.

“It’s weird, sometimes,” Nicky said, but didn’t elaborate. He turned to the others instead, loudly calling them to come and get their share,  _you pitiless wells of void_.

The food was good. Matt felt like his mouth was caked with dust, but complimented it anyway.

When they sat back on the couch, Aaron sat close enough that his shoulder was touching Nicky’s and Neil laid with his back against the armrest and his feet pushed against Nicky’s thigh. Andrew had gotten up to smoke by the window, but when he came back he avoided the empty chair behind Kevin to sit instead on the beanbag behind Matt.

Somehow, it felt threatening, but Nicky was relaxing in the casual touches and that was good enough.

 

 

In the afternoon, Aaron and Nicky fell asleep on the couch. Matt took care of collecting the dishes as Kevin took over the TV, looking all relieved as he finally managed to settle on the rerun of some Exy match. Andrew got up too, and Matt froze, but in the end headed to the window and pulled another cigarette out.

Water filling the sink, Matt took a moment to go through the day and he found himself feeling desperately guilty.

It was clear that Andrew knew something was going on, which meant Neil had to know too. Aaron’s behavior today, from preparing breakfast to spending the day in to the casual touches, was just as clear a sign he was not fooled by Nicky’s act. Kevin could be in with the suspicions, but Matt doubted he had the tact to keep quiet if he had realized something was going on. All in all, they were Nicky’s family; they were  _worried_ , though they had their own ways to show it. They deserved to know what was making their Nicky so miserable, but they were in the absolute darkness. And here Matt was, knowing everything and keeping silent about it.

If he were to fail somehow, if something were to happen to Nicky when he was the only one who knew what to be on the lookout for, he wouldn’t forgive himself. And the twins would kill him, and Neil would dispose of the body. Kevin would provide an alibi, maybe.

“Shit,” he said, pushing his hands into the soapy water and scrubbing vigorously at one of the pans, as if he could get his conscience cleaned at the same time. 

“If you ruin that, Nicky will cry.”

Matt almost jumped out of his skin,  _again_. This time, he knew who it was, though. “Neil, man, you know I love you, but you need to stop doing  _this_.”

Neil shrugged, indifferent, and moved to stand beside him. He grabbed the pan from his hand and passed it under clean water before picking up the towel to dry it up. 

There was no way in Hell and Heaven that Neil was here by coincidence, but Matt hoped anyway. He proceeded on washing thing after thing and pretending he didn’t know there was an hidden reason for this burst of helpfulness.

It lasted a couple minutes, before Neil sighed. “You know what’s going on. With Nicky.”

Matt shrugged, unhelpful. Denying that something waseven going on was like putting a target on his chest and call the twins  _shorties_.

“Andrew will figure it out. Either from Nicky or from you.”

“And you’re not going to stop him, are you?”

Neil frowned. “He looks after his family. You can’t tell me you’re surprised.”

He was not. Only an idiot would have been. “I don’t know the specifics any more than you do, Neil. I just spend more time with him than you all. I just picked it up sooner.” Half a lie, half a truth. He hoped it wasn’t too blatant.

Neil dried his hands and took a long look at his face. “Andrew thinks you know something more. I can tell him this,—” he mentioned to the two of them, “—but I can’t promise he’ll believe me.”

Matt nodded. “I’m worried too, you know. I care for Nicky.”

“I know,” Neil said, turning back toward the living room. “But just worrying is not helping him, and it’s not enough for Andrew."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was bound to happen.

 

 

Matt helped Nicky block his parents’ numbers the day after. Whatever reason he’d had not to do as much before, it had seemed to vanish in his breakdown.

For four more days, the monsters made a compact rubber wall around Nicky, but they could all see the results were fleeting and shorter every time. Aaron tried to confront Nicky once and it ended in a huge fight, if one could call it such when it was just Aaron yelling and Nicky retreating. Kevin had offered an underhanded comment about practice that Neil shot down with a glare. 

“Exy can’t be everybody’s answer,” he had said. It should have been ironic, coming from him, but Matt didn’t feel like laughing.

Andrew was closing in on him the clearer it became that Nicky wouldn’t offer any explanation for himself, Matt knew it. He wondered why nothing had happened yet. Maybe Andrew was hesitant in letting someone in on his family’s business, or maybe he just didn’t trust Matt to really have anything useful on the matter. Maybe he had believed the lie Neil had reported to him, in the end.

One thing that was becoming customary, was physicality. Nicky wouldn’t actively seek it as he used to do before, but Matt tried to provide it anyway. They would sit close on the couch, he would lay an elbow on Nicky’s shoulder or wrap an arm around his neck, and they shared a bed more often than not. Aaron never mentioned it, but he would look at them, sometimes, as if trying to decipher something.

The fifth day after the major episode, Matt woke up to a tremble in the bed.

At first, he thought Nicky was having a nightmare. It was no news, after all. Matt already knew to wake Nicky up slowly and then ask no question, just hold him closer and let him snuggle so that his face was hidden. Sometimes Nicky would cry; if so, Matt would slip his fingers through his locks and make and unmake his ponytail or bun until Nicky had calmed down enough. They had been burning through the samples of soothing tea that Renee had coincidentally asked them to try the night of the monster’s hangout, but she luckily had dropped some more off just the day before, when Nicky was gone for a walk for a couple hours.

When he turned to him, though, Matt saw that Nicky’s eyes were half open and dazed, glossed all over. He was trembling every now and then and his forehead was shiny with sweat, some strands of hair stuck to his flushed skin.

“Aaron!” He was on his knees on the bad in a second, and his hand found Nicky’s face, tasting, searching, but it was hard to say if he had a temperature when he was normally a human furnace. “Aaron, wake up!"

“What?!” It wasn’t fair to go to Aaron, it wasn’t like he was already a doctor, but Matt wasn’t exactly rational. “What’s going on?”

Nicky whimpered pitifully and shoved his face in the pillow to escape Matt’s cold hands.

“Get me the first aid kit, I think he’s running a fever.” To his credit, Aaron didn’t complain at being ordered around and snuck out of the room immediately. As he watched him leave, Matt caught sight of the digital clock on the bedside table and winced. 3:00 am. Goodbye sleep, it seemed.

Aaron came back with the kit and a bowl with some water and a towel, and Matt found himself brusquely shoved off the bed to let him through.

Getting Nicky to lift his armpit and hold the thermometer was a bit of a challenge. Ill Nicky was a grumpy huge baby, apparently. Aaron was unamused and it was too early for Matt to be properly swooned by the sight.

“He doesn’t seem to have a fever,—” Aaron said when he checked, “—but it’s hard to tell, he didn’t exactly kept this thing still.”

Matt was dabbing Nicky’s forehead with the wet towel and frowned. “Nicky. Hey, Nicky. Do you need us to get you to the bathroom? Should we call Abby?”

Nicky’s answer was a muttering that sounded like some slobbered gibberish for “Lemme sleeeep”, and Matt exchanged a look with Aaron, who shrugged. 

“Let’s just go back to bed and see in the morning,” he claimed. Reluctantly, Matt had to agree it sounded like the best course of action. He knew nothing about Nicky’s meds and he didn’t want to risk by giving him other stuff that he didn’t know if was compatible or dangerous or anything. He decided he could call Bee in the morning to ask her for advice if need arose.

Aaron climbed back in his bunk, and Matt could feel his eyes on his back as he stood knelt besides Nicky. Ignoring it, he stood up and slipped back under the covers beside Nicky, who immediately clung to him like a burning koala.

Fuck it. Matt would rather get the flu than letting Nicky go right now.

 

 

In the morning, Matt and Aaron took their turns at the bathroom and then came back to the bedroom to check on their friend. 

It took one look at Nicky’s pathetic attempts at standing up against his vertigo, at his palish face almost ghostly in the contrast with his usually deep brown shade, at the exhaustion all over him, to decide there was no way he was coming to practice today.

Nicky was against the idea, but made gave only one delicate push to his shoulder and that was enough to make him fall back sitting on his bed. Obviously, he complained, but the motion had honestly been so weak even Aaron arched a brow at him, still only halfway into his shirt. “You’re staying in,” he said, like there was any chance Matt was going to let Nicky go anywhere like that.

“I don’t want to.” Was he pouting? Was that twenty-three years old man honest to God pouting at Matt?! The audacity! 

It was almost adorable enough to make him fall; Nicky must have learnt it from Neil.

Aaron, surprisingly, backed Matt up again with an — unsurprising — annoyed scoff. “Coach will take one look at you and send you back here with a kick in your ass.”

“I don’t know,” Matt arched a brow at the sight of Nicky having to use his hands to balance himself to sit upright and not just fall to a side. “He looks like a kick from Coach would be enough to send him into coma. Abby probably wouldn’t let him. But still.”

Nicky glared at them both, but the gesture was ineffective as he didn’t seem able to focus on either of them. “Abby lets Neil play when he still looks like a human punching bag,” he slurred.

Aaron rolled his eyes. “That’s because Josten needs Exy to survive, like plants need sun or carbon dioxide.”

“Fuck you and your difficult words, Aaron.”

“And that’s it,” Matt grabbed Nicky’s shoulders and half pushed and half accompanied him to lay down, then he threw the covers back on him to tuck him in. “If you consider Exy a difficult word, you’re staying in.”

Nicky glared at him, this time finding his target. “I didn’t mean Exy!”

“Then what did you mean?”

“The other thing! Carbs peroxide or stuff.”

Matt pointedly looked at Aaron, determined to make him a witness for when explaining coach his cousin’s absence, and received back a frowning forehead. “What the fuck is wrong with him?”

_Weeks of poor sleep, shit going down with his parents, depression kicking in, probably exhaustion that made him fall ill_ … Matt indulged thinking about saying all of that, just to see if Aaron would worry, if he’d run tell Andrew and what the other would do, but only for a moment. He knew better than to share what was not his to tell. “Maybe food poisoning? He hate some leftovers that were about to expire,” he lied.

Aaron seemed to bite because he sighed at his cousin’s form going limp under Matt’s grip. Nicky’s attempts at moving were in words alone, now, as sleep caught up to him again. Soon enough, he was breathing heavily through his mouth.

They left the room with Nicky inside just a bit later, heading to practice in the silence of the Fox Tower at six am, and it was weird. Usually, they had a human chatterbox in full function following them. 

“I’ll stay over at Katelyn's until Nicky’s better,” Aaron said suddenly. “Are you going to ask the girls?”

There was no mean ill in his voice, it was just a statement, a plan of action in front of his cousin’s sudden illness. Aaron was a serious student who didn’t want to catch his roommate’s flu. It was sensible, it was responsible, and it was actually kind of nice of him to ask about Matt’s plans. It was probably the most civil interaction they’ve had since the room change and without Nicky’s intervention.

Still, Matt was tempted to say that leaving Nicky alone was probably not the best idea, at the moment. That it was not because of the flu, it was something worse. It was something bad, real bad. He wanted to tell Aaron not to go, and maybe to keep studying sitting closer to his cousin just for a few days, just to see if it helped him.

“Nah, I’ve got a strong immunity sistem,” was what he said. “Someone better stay and look after Nicky before he dies trying to come to practice.”

Aaron huffed an annoyed assent, probably used to his cousin’s antics, and that was the end of their interaction.

Matt wanted to tell him that he had left an antidepressant pill under the napkin he put on Nicky’s bedside table, together with breakfast. He wanted to tell him someone had to go back and check that he had taken it.

He didn’t. He thought Aaron would care even without knowing how bad it was.

 

 

Wymack hadn’t looked happy when Matt and Aaron reported him that Nicky was ill, but he seemed to believe them after Andrew stared them down long enough to make the most navigated liar fess up every secret they’d ever kept. Renee expressed some concerns for his health and Dan sent Matt a meaningful look, but they stopped talking about it when the freshmen arrived.

Jack made a derisive snort toward Nicky’s locker, but Aaron slammed into his shoulder  _by accident_ and he kept his thoughts for himself.

The tight knitting of the cousin’s relationship, for as complex and unreadable for most people, was starting to show a pattern of brusque protectiveness mixed with some  _light_  homicidal tendencies. The dark shades of what had happened in their lives, to all three of them, made those extremes look reasonable, acceptable even. After all, how could someone cry Drake’s death? Would someone even bother to mourn Luther, were something to happen to him? Matt hoped not.

They got changed in relative silence, the freshmen’s chattering and Neil and Kevin discussing Exy being the only voices breaking the silence until they reached the court.

Once a week, the Vixens trained on the cheerleader’s stage beside the court, to familiarize with the tight space and encourage training. It wasn’t a surprise to catch Katelyn bending over the railing to steal a kiss from Aaron as he passed by, ever since he and Andrew had started therapy together, but she’d never came down to their bench before. She was whispering with one of the new girls in the roaster, and Matt’s good natured joke — he  _really_  was spending too much time with Nicky — died on his lips when he noticed the worried expression on her face and the way she was torching her hands in front of her stomach.

Aaron was by her side in a second, and Matt hesitated behind to check on the other twin, but Andrew didn’t seem to have registered her presence at all. Neil and Kevin were just behind him and they seemed just as tense at the prospect of putting Katelyn so close to the other Minyard, but there was no stopping the imminent collision.

If Aaron’s expression was anything to go by, he wasn’t too pleased by the surprise either. Still, he kissed her slightly on the lips and murmured a soft “Hey.” Katelyn returned the gesture, but she pulled away quite soon to check on the upcoming group. Her eyes met Andrew’s briefly and she barely suppressed a flinch.

“Something wrong?” 

Katelyn shook her head at her boyfriend’s question, though her behavior clearly suggested the opposite. She looked around once more, before daring to look back at Aaron. “Nicky is not here?” 

It didn’t really sound like a question. Matt froze almost at their side, and he could hear that the other three men had done the same just behind him.

Aaron seemed all the more confused. “No, he woke up feeling ill so we left him in his room. Why?"

Somehow, Katelyn looked a bit relieved, though not enough to stop clenching her hands. Aaron touched them lightly to make her loose the grip.

She forced herself to smile at him. “I was just a bit worried when I didn’t see him getting off the car with—the others.” She clearly had meant to say Andrew, but stopped just shy of that. If she was scared of catching his attention even more, Matt considered, she was a bit late: the moment she’d mentioned Nicky, Andrew had zeroed on her. He seemed only barely aware of Neil’s hand hovering on his forearm. “He seemed a bit weird when we talked, yesterday, so—“

“You talked?” Matt couldn’t stop himself nor prevent his face from taking whichever expression it felt the need to. His mind had hyper-focused on everything Nicky said or did the day before, but it couldn’t come up with any mentioning of Katelyn at all, let alone a visit or a call. And the only moment Nicky left the room had been the two hours in which he claimed he would go for a walk. Matt had assumed it was a code for a meeting with Bee and hadn't pushed when he had come back.

Katelyn seemed surprised by his intervention and stole a glance at Aaron, yet she nodded firmly a second after. “We met in the hallway and he walked me back to my room yesterday afternoon. He asked if we could talk.”

“I didn’t know about any of this,” Aaron said, his shoulders just slightly tensing. Matt knew it wasn’t in anger, because he could feel his own stiffen just the same in worry.

“He kind of asked me not to tell, it was—” Katelyn hesitated just to finish, quite lamely, “— _personal_.”

“ _How_ personal.” It came too flat to be a question, but since it was Andrew’s mouth that spoke the words nobody made the mistake of taking the tone for disinterest. It was an order, simple as that.

Katelyn’s face turned ashen. She pursed her lips in a tin line, an instinctual disobedience. Impressive with everything that had happened. Before she could say anything, though, Neil cursed. “Did he gave you some speech about Aaron?,” he asked just after, and only then Matt noticed he too was quite pale faced. “Said something about being there for him and the likes?”

This time, Katelyn looked surprised. “Uh—yeah. It was like a shovel talk but in good terms? More of a ‘ _pl_ — _take care of him for me_ ’, rather than ‘ _hurt him and I will kill you_ ’, you know?” She turned slightly to Aaron. "Nicky’s a sweetheart, I was glad he was caring for you and I thought he was a bit worried about when he’ll be back in Germany and all."

Matt looked back at Neil and Neil return his gaze with wide eyes. “He came to talk to me yesterday afternoon too,” he said in a low voice. “I thought that after hanging out all together he may have gotten, I don’t know, nostalgic.” His hand lowered just enough to touch Andrew’s arm, maybe to give maybe to gain support. “He was waiting for me on the rooftop. He seemed off, but I thought it was because he hadn’t been sure whether he’d catch me or Andrew first, up there.” 

“There was something off when he talked to me too, but he looked so cheerful when he left the room that I thought I had imagined it.” Katelyn said. She looked at Aaron with a remorseful expression. “I would have told you if he still looked weird today, but I panicked a bit when he wasn’t anywhere. I guess there’s nothing to worry if he’s just ill?”

Matt admired Katelyn. She was a smart and brave girl, not to mention really stubborn to make it into one of the Minyard’s steel walls. The way she said the last sentence, too. She clearly knew something wasn’t right, Aaron probably told her some, and she had planned of making sure she wasn’t conjuring false alarms before setting off her boyfriend’s fears.

Having a talk with Katelyn wasn’t a sign of any kind, per se. She’d just recently been ‘accepted’ by Andrew and the process of including her in the monsters’ lives was long and full of struggles. But Neil too? The same day, the same kind of talk? So close to whatever had happened to make him freak out? And the day after he was suddenly too ill to come to practice.

Matt didn’t like the picture that was building up, not at fucking all.

From Andrew’s dark face, he didn’t either. For the first time in so long, he looked at Katelyn’s face, admitting he was actually seeing her. Immediately after, he let his eyes roam on everyone by the benches. “Anything else, anybody? More  _weird_ things he did?”

“We were by the post office when we met,” Katelyn said, now holding on her boyfriend’s hands just as strongly as she’d been torching her own just a bit earlier. “I heard he had gotten a letter from the lawyer so I asked him what it was. I thought it may have been about Aaron, but he said it was just a speeding ticket for you. I don’t know, it just seemed weird that he would talk to a lawyer about that.”

_Shit._

Matt could hear Nicky’s voice saying those words in his mind, he could see every detail of his face from the bend of his lips to the smooth cheek without any dimples to advocate for his truth. It was not because of a good imagination.He remembered Nicky using that same excuse once, so long before, when another letter had come, just before he skipped practice to hide in Bee’s study.If he ever really did go there, Matt wasn’t sure anymore. _Shit, shit._ That wasn’t even the point at the moment.

Nicky had lied to Katelyn, asked her and then Neil to take care of the twins for him, and then he got both him and Aaron to leave him alone in the room as they went to practice.

_Shit!_

When Matt turned and started running, Andrew was already halfway down the corridor to the parking lot.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this story is mostly from Matt's POV, I've been considering writing one or two one-shots from other people's POVs, just to fill the blanks. It's still only a consideration, but keep an eye out, just in case.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a self-fulfilled prophecy.

 

 

Matt narrowly avoided having the exit door of the stadium slammed on his face. When he pushed it back open and came to an halt on the sidewalk, he caught sight of the Maserati sprinting out of the parking lot, headed toward Fox Tower. Every inch of his skin crawled to do just the same, to jump in his truck and drive just as recklessly, but he forced himself not to. 

He knew Andrew wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to his cousin, not on his watch, so he got in the truck but waited for Neil and Aaron to jump in as well before he started the engine. He heard the twin, in the back, yell at Katelyn to tell coach what was going on, but he didn’t slow down.

“Fuck,” Neil cursed. For once, he had his phone in hand and was viciously punching the keys, searching for the Nicky’s number. He brought the device to his ear. “I should have told Andrew that we talked, Nicky never said anything like that before.”

“Neil, don’t.” Matt meant it. It was not Neil’s fault, like it was not Katelyn’s and, really, it was not the twins.  _They_ hadn’t know they should have been on the lookout for something so extreme. “I should have realized something was going on.”

Neil sent a look his way, the gaze of a liar to another liar, but didn’t make any comment. His phone was still ringing against his ear, unanswered.

The Maserati had three wheels on the sidewalk, right in front of the Tower’s door, when they arrived. Aaron jumped off the cart before Matt had even killed the engine, though he and Neil followed immediately after. Matt reached their floor second and slammed with his full body against the doors to the dorms.

Dan, Allison and Renee must have been on their way to practice because they were in the corridor now, loudly asking questions and somehow holding the few freshmen still in the dorm from Matt, Aaron and Nicky’s room.

Their door had been wrenched open. One of the hinges was slightly bent and Matt was half sure it had been locked when they left, but fuck that.

He ignored Dan’s inquiry. “Nicky!”

The living room was empty. He could see Aaron’s back as he stepped into the bathroom, looking around frantically but finding nothing. The kitchen had been cleaned, in plain sight Nicky’s tray from breakfast had been dismantled and his dishes washed. Andrew emerged from the bedroom like a god of vengeance, his face dark in fury and Erik’s yellow shirt — Nicky’s pajama — in his clenched fist. Matt met his eyes for a second, and realized he was breathing fast and heavy. His hands were tingling with restlessness.

_Nicky..._

He hit the floor behind the couch with his back before his brain could register a body barreling his way. “ _Andrew!_ ” Dan, or maybe Renee, went unheard as Andrew sat on Matt’s stomach and pulled a knife to his throat. "Where is Nicky?!”

Matt struggled to breath in the aftermath of the hit. “I don’t know!”

“Don’t fuck with me, Boyd!” This close, Andrew was truly terrifying. Matt had been on the wrong end of his wrath because of Kevin, already, but never like this. This, he guessed, was probably what Allison saw when Andrew almost snapped her neck for hitting Aaron. “I’m done putting up with your bullshit so fucking tell me already!"

Matt was acutely aware that Neil was nowhere to be seen and Renee’s voice was falling short, maybe as she finally started taking in what was going on. He was sweating now, but his brain was a jumble of messy thoughts and he didn’t realize he had been struggling under Andrew until the man frowned. “What the fuck is that?"

Before Matt could even understand what they were talking about, Andrew’s free hand had moved to the left front pocket of his jeans.  _Fuck._

Aaron widened his eyes as his twin took out the orange bottle of Nicky’s pills. “What’s that?” 

Andrew didn’t answer, but threw the bottle behind himself and left his twin to catch it midair. Instead, he pressed the knife harder against Matt’s throat. “I’m losing what little patience I had, Boyd.”

“Andrew, let go of him,” Renee said, somewhere close.

Matt’s field of vision was full of Andrew’s thunderous expression, but he still heard as clear as day Aaron cursing loudly. He was probably reading the label on the bottle, had probably found his cousin’s name printed on it. Somehow, some of the fear melted at the thought of the twins knowing, of the secret being out. He had done all he could to be on Nicky’s side, but now it was out of his hands. And Nicky may have been in danger, so secrecy wasn’t really in the top priorities anymore.

“Those are Nicky’s,” he said it for Andrew’s benefit more than anything. He wasn’t sure if he’d read the label when he threw the pills to Aaron. “Bee diagnosed him with a relapse of his depression a little more than month ago."

He half heard several gasps. Aaron was coming closer, his face terrified as he looked down at Matt. “Why do  _you_  have them?!”

“It's not what you think, for fuck's sake! He didn’t want to have them around.”

Andrew’s grip on his throat tightened, his eyes flashed. “He’s suicidal again.”

“He said it wasn’t that bad, yet,” Matt hurried to shake his head. “He scheduled weekly sessions with Bee and took his meds regularly, he just wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything if he were to have a really bad day. It was supposed to be just a precaution!” But then he’d gone and made sure the people he loved the most would be cared for and loved. Out of nowhere. Matt closed his eyes against the wash of tears and pain that surged in his chest, squeezing his lungs like an hunting trap. He pushed with his hips against Andrew’s weight on him. “We’re wasting time here, we need to go look for him!”

“We left more than an hour ago,” Aaron whispered. He was not looking at Matt, but at Andrew that wouldn’t turn to him, wouldn’t let got of Matt, wouldn’t stop his hand from shaking with a blade against the other's throat. “He could be anywhere now.”

“He’s not on the roo- _Andrew!_ ”

Matt felt no relief as Neil ran into the room and came to their side, kneeling beside his head as he spoke in low Russian murmurs. Neil was just as empty-handed as them. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“If not on the roof, did you check off of it? You know, the other side of the rail-Fuck!”

Andrew’s head snapped up. Matt tried to follow his gaze and upside down he saw Allison holding Sheena against the wall with a hand at the neck of her shirt. Judging by the whimpers coming from the girl's mouth, she’d been heavy handed in slamming her there. “Be fucking glad you’re out of Andrew’s reach right now, because I  _would_ let him stab you for this, Sheena, I’m not fooling around.” She slammed her again, for good measure, and Matt thought, _It's Seth all over again for her_. “Say that shit again, and I’ll gut you myself."

A hand hovered on Matt’s cheek, making him flinch in surprise. Renee was kneeling just beside him, opposed to Neil, and her gaze was firm but colder than Matt had ever seen it before. “We will find Nicky,” she said, and he wasn’t sure whether she was telling him or Sheena or Andrew or just everybody. It was the sound an oath from an angel’s lips.

“Andrew, he’s right,” Neil wasn’t looking at anyone but Andrew. “This is not the time, we have to go look for Nicky.” Then he added, as an afterthought. “You and Matt were both at the court, he doesn’t have a car. He can’t be that far yet.”

Aaron had said the very opposite thing two seconds ago, but Neil's lie would have been obvious anyway. Nicky didn’t need to go far. Nicky probably didn’t even  _want_ to go far, and that was the whole point. Matt’s throat was clogged with wet cotton and growing sponges. “I’m sorry,” he tried to say, but wasn’t sure if he’d managed. “I’m really sorry. I-”

Aaron's phone started ringing, and he pulled it from his pocket in a hurry. Andrew let go of his grip on Matt as he turned to stare at his twin, his blade now pulled far from the skin, but Matt saw them both deflate as Aaron cursed at the screen. “We left Kevin at the court.”

“Kevin is a big boy, he can fucking walk back, if he wants,” Neil all but snarled. He was still close, apparently too much because Andrew recoiled and stood fast to take a couple steps closer to Aaron, who had hung up on Kevin. 

Matt didn’t feel like breathing was much easier, even with Renee and Neil helping him to sit. Dan’s hands came to his shoulders from behind in a second and he let her hold him up. He felt weak.

It was Neil’s phone to ring and Andrew cursed out loud. It wasn’t even Kevin’s fault, Matt thought absent-mindedly, but he still shared the sentiment, somehow.

Neil pulled the phone from his pocket and threw it away in a fit. It scraped the top of the couch backrest and fell on the cushions first and then on the floor, still ringing. “We need to tell coach and Bee. Maybe she knows where he could be.”

“Great idea, I’m sure he and Dobson talked at length about where he would kill himself if the need ever arose,” Aaron hissed.

Matt flinched at the words and he saw Neil jerking too. Andrew had gone stiff and still, his face so blank it scared Matt to Hell and beyond. The phone stopped ringing that very moment. The quiet lasted for only a second, though, because the moment after Neil was back on his feet and turned to Aaron like a snake to his prey, mouth open to spit poison.

“ _Hey, Neil, it’s Nicky! Sorry, my phone was still on silent from tonight and I didn’t get your calls at all! I guess you’re at practice already and that’s why you won’t answer, but did something happen or was that Kevin trying to get me? Matt has to have told you I was out cold this morning. Anyway, I am feeling better and I'm going to get some cold pills. A friend from the swimming team is giving me a ride so we’re also stopping by the mall because he has some groceries to get and then we’ll be back. Let’s say a couple hours, given or taken? I’ll probably be back before you guys are done training, and with food supplies, but just in case. Alright, I’ll let you go back to ogling the court and Andrew in a jersey. Ah, men in uniform, am I right? Okay, call me back when you’re done! Bye!"_  

Matt blinked.

He blinked once and twice and thrice and finally he turned to Renee because she was the first one to move in the sea of frozen bodies around them. Her shoulders slumped, her hand raised to the cross around her neck and her lips caressed a soft prayer in a breath. When she opened her eyes again and met his, she smiled softly.

“He’s alright, Matt,” she said, and everybody knew that Renee didn’t lie.

Maybe that was why her words broke the spell and sent the room into a frenzy. Matt let himself fall backward, against Dan’s chest, and smiled when she sobbed or laughed in his ear, he wasn’t sure, and wrapped her hands around him.

Neil and Aaron’s hostility seemed to have been forgotten as they both turned to Andrew, who seemed to be coming off the shock slower than the others. Matt saw him take a look at his twin and his boyfriend and sigh. “I have to fucking kill him myself, now.”

And as Allison, ever the pragmatic, moved to the couch to collect Neil’s phone and check that, yes, it had been Nicky to call and leave the message, Matt felt the sponges in his throat turn into something lighter, helios balloon that raised in his throat, that he couldn’t stop, that broke through his lips and bursted into an hysteric laughter.

Groceries! Fucking  _groceries_!

Matt was going to keep Nicky still as Andrew killed him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise there's more behind this than it seems from this chapter. More stuff will come up in the next one, it's not this "easy". But, yeah, I guess we're almost there.
> 
> (Also, my mom's very old phone used to do this shit where you could impost it so it put recorded messages in loudspeaker and I'm trusting in Neil's revulsion for technology to make this chapter slightly realistic.)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unexpectedly.

 

 

Dan called coach to cancel practice. Kevin was definitely not happy about it, yet he simmered down considerably when Andrew stole the phone and filled Wymack up with the details of Nicky’s situation.

Matt only felt half bad about outing Nicky’s illness to the team, partially because the situation had been dire enough to call for it and partially because this they were all his family, they all could make a difference in helping him. Maybe, if Kevin had known, he would have still rode Nicky’s ass for not being on par with the others, but he wouldn’t have called him  _replaceable._ Andrew and Aaron wouldn’t have started to be the best brothers in the world, but they had proved in the past days that they could keep it civil if it was for their cousin’s wellbeing. Or maybe Matt was just being naïve, as Andrew would have surely pointed out.

After the call and Kevin’s return on coach’s car, the younger Foxes scrambled away quickly in front of the tension. Sheena threw one last look at the room, and Allison glared back just as fiercely, before she left as well.

The older Foxes camped in Nicky’s room. They took the beanbags and the couch, they turned the TV on despite the fact that not even Neil and Kevin seemed to be interested in the Exy match on screen. Renee prepared some kind of snack for everyone while Allison bitched in her ear, too lowly for anyone to say what it was about. 

Dan kissed Matt’s cheek reassuringly, their hands entwined.  _You did well._ She nestled her head in the crook between his neck and shoulder.  _You did the best for him. Let us help now._

Katelyn stopped by shortly after. Her coach told her off for being too distracted and she just upped and left. Aaron took her to a beanbag and slumped against her so she could hold him closer and ran a hand in his hair, uncaring of anyone else is the room. Andrew didn’t spare them a look; he perched himself on the windowsill to chain-smoke and stare at Neil, sitting on the desk and staring right back, without a word.

Nicky would probably be half guilty and half relieved, to see how many people worried for him. Maybe this would finally get the message through his thick head.

The Exy commentators went wild over someone's goal.

 

 

Matt started worrying when an hour had passed and Nicky wasn’t back yet, but he chided himself for exaggerating. He forced his twitching body to sit down on the couch when Andrew’s eyes left the scenery outside the window to glare at him through the crippling forms of smoke dangling from his cigarette. Neil was still sitting on the desk but had slipped closer to the edge and his boyfriend —or whatever he and Minyard called themselves— and his expression was pinched tight as he let his eyes wander between the people in the room. Aaron sat arms crossed on a beanbag, slumped against his girlfriend and looked on the verge of scolding someone. Matt wasn’t sure if he’d go for Andrew for not worrying already or for him for worrying too soon. 

Truth to be told, Matt barely remembered the last time any of the monsters didn’t side with Andrew, so he refused to take his chance. The mall was a ten minutes drive from Fox Tower anyway, so it wasn’t outrageous that Nicky wasn’t back with whatever supplies he’d chosen on yet. Matt didn’t even have an idea of what went into half the Mexican foods Nicky could prepare. Maybe it took some time to choose between the options; after all, Andrew had a sweet tooth the size of Kansas, Aaron loved spicy food and Kevin had turned Neil into an health freak like himself so multiple choices had to be prepared. There was nothing to worry about, they did that enough already.

Allison had stormed off the room after pacing up and down the whole flat for a while, and Renee and Dan had followed after to check on her. Kevin had gone to his own bedroom and came back with an history book so worn out it looked yellowish already and he had sat at the kitchen counter to read through it again, caressing the pages with delicate reverence.

Around the hour and forty-five minutes, Andrew’s glare intensified and Matt’s bouncing leg received a cold “ _Stop it_ ”. Matt stopped for a total of five minutes.

Katelyn tried to skip class and stay with Aaron, but after a few minutes of frantic whispering he convinced her to go and take notes for the both of them. Nicky was fine, after all, they knew it, Aaron was just staying back to make sure, no need for her to miss class too, it was just for his sake of mind, everything was  _fine_. Andrew’s shoulders relaxed slightly when she left the room.

Around the two hours tic, Neil shifted his weight just slightly, his foot pressing only an inch into Andrew’s calf. To the comfort of which one of them, Matt wasn’t sure, but he knew a soothing gesture when he saw one. He met his friend’s blue eyes and he knew now he wasn’t the only one worrying.

Kevin had finished the chapter he’d been reading, and turned the pages backwards until he found an earlier one to get started on. If nothing else, he was turning to history instead of vodka.

Twenty minutes later still, Matt opened his mouth, barely let out a “ _Maybe we should-_ “ and flinched when Andrew abruptly stood up. His glare wasn’t focused on someone now, but it made Matt shiver anyway. “I’m kicking his ass,” Andrew said, and it sounded like  _let’s go looking for him because now I’m worried too_. 

Matt stood so fast his pressure took his sight from him for a second, so he was the last one to reach the door room, and the last one to get into the corridor to see a bleached faced Wymach marching toward them, knocking loudly on the older girls' door and then motioning roughly for them to follow him. Abby, besides him, looked just as ashen and Matt’s blood ran cold when he saw Betsy following them in tow too.

“Nicky is out buying groceries…” he tried, but his voice died down slowly, as the coach’s eyes fell on him and his jaw clenched.

“Back inside—,” he said, “—now.” And they followed, because the Foxes knew the routine for bad news by now.

It took little for all of them to slip inside. Dan walked up to Matt and he grabbed her hand immediately, trying to get from her all the strength he could. Renee and Allison stood side by side, arms crossed before their bellies, and Aaron sent a look to his brother that seemed to scream for Nicky loud enough for all of them to hear. Kevin looked lost besides his father and wouldn’t move his eyes from him even though Wymack’s wouldn’t stop bouncing between the Minyard twins.

“I got a call from the police station downtown,” he stated, matter-of-factly as always. Matt’s stomach dropped, because last time this happened the FBI was telling them they’d found Neil tortured and barely alive in Baltimore. “They arrested Nicky.”

“They  _what_?! What for, public indecency?!” Allison asked, her own brand of sarcasm barely hiding her disbelief and indignation. Her make-up had been re-done, which was a stupid thing to notice but Matt did anyway.

“Aggression.” Wymack looked halfway between pained and downright furious. “Luther Hemmick was inside the mall Nicky was shopping at. They apparently had a fight inside and security ordered Nicky to leave, so he went back to the parking lot and vandalized his father’s car. When Luther went to stop him, he attacked him and it took two agents to get him off.”

_Luther._

Matt was pretty sure he heard Allison muttering about giving Nicky a medal, not handcuffs, but he couldn’t focus on her. “What was Luther doing here? Nicky didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore.”

He ignored the eyes of the twins on himself, but Wymack could only shake his head. “No idea, but he was apparently the one who approached Nicky first so he probably followed him there. Listen, this is no fucking coincidence and we all know it, I don’t need to tell you. He didn’t press charges, if anything, so they told me they're going to release Nicky soon enough, which is the only good thing in this fucking mess.”

“David and I will go get him,” Betsy intervened for the first time. Her voice was even and soothing, just like in her sessions, but her eyes fell on Andrew and didn’t move from there, holding his resentful gaze and meeting his clenched fists with no fear. Matt knew she had no reason to, because that anger was not for her and Andrew didn’t make collaterals that weren’t himself. “Whatever happened with Luther, it must have been really bad for eliciting such a reaction from Nicky. Considering his health at the moment, we’ll see if bringing him here or over at Abby’s place. In any case, I’ll be speaking with him first.” 

“And then?” Kevin asked.

"And then we’ll go from there.”

 

 

Dan’s slow breath against his hair and her hands around his waist were the only things preventing Matt from sprinting from the couch and start pacing around. Kevin was pretending to watch TV but he was changing channels too fast to be really looking at it. 

Allison had barreled into the bedroom and she was throwing Nicky’s stuff out of the drawers to rearrange it around, muttering curses to herself as Renee tried to soothe her. They were supposedly preparing some clothes for Nicky if he were to go to Abby’s place, but the duffle bag on the floor was sill obstinately empty. Renee mentioned Seth once, and Allison’s retort had been so scalding she didn’t do it again. In hindsight, Matt felt closer to her than ever. He remembered her checking Seth’s pockets for his antidepressants and felt his guts torch in return.

Coach texted them twice. Once to tell them they had released Nicky and he and Bee were in Wymack’s car, having an impromptu emergency session, as he and Abby walked around the block endlessly and stocked on coffee and something light for Nicky to eat. Twice, to tell them they were on their way back to the Tower.

It had been around thirty minutes earlier, but Matt still jumped on the couch when the doorknob twisted. He accidentally disjointed Dan from him in his haste to get to his feet, but she let him go and followed right after without so much as a word. 

Coach got in first. Nicky came right after him, followed by both Bee and Abby, his face a blank expression like he’d lost all that will he had left in the two hours since he called Neil. He shrugged his jacket off and Matt cursed as Kevin bleached.

“What happened to your hand?!” Aaron gave voice to everybody’s thoughts as he stared at the thick bandage enveloping Nicky’s right hand and half his forearm and the sling letting it hang from his neck.

“He sprained his wrist,” Abby supplied with a sigh. “Luckily it’s nothing too bad. It should heal soon enough, but he’ll have to keep it still for a while."

“How?!”

Wymack grunted and said, “He punched Luther in the face.”

The words made Nicky blink slowly at Aaron, standing just a step from him. He seemed to register them because his expression hardened. "I think I broke his left cheekbone. I  _know_ I broke the right one and his nose."

“You unhinged his jaw too, Nicky. For fuck’s sake, you basically reshaped all his facial features!”

The look Nicky sent Wymack was a frozen hell in itself. “ _Good_. I’ll look less like him, now.”

Matt didn’t know what to say to that. Nobody knew what to say. Wymack’s lips pursed in a line and kept sealed. Aaron took a step closer to his cousin.

"Turn around."

Nicky’s head lifted, but Andrew gave no explanation as he strode across the room toward his twin and cousin. Matt saw Neil making no motion to follow and forced himself to do the same.

Wymack didn’t get the hint and scowled as Aaron got Nicky under his jacket again and hushed him toward the door. “Andrew!"

"Sorry, Coach, bonding time after the first arrest is a family tradition. Did you pick up his mugshot? Aaron and I were thinking about framing it with ours and make that our own family portrait. Isn't it nice? Be proud of us, Coach."

“Andrew,” Bee repeated, though much gentler.

“No, no, Bee, not this time, okay? Let’s talk about this next Wednesday.” He pulled the car keys out his pocket and gestured to the other two. "Okay, we're leaving,  _hop hop_." 

Nicky looked far too shocked to protest and he went meekly under the push of Aaron’s hands. Neil didn’t follow, but held Wymack’s glare in his direction.

Matt grabbed Dan’s hand, watched them go and thought,  _oh._

_This might even be a good thing._

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's lay all the cards on the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: You all know Luther's a piece of shit, and here are mentioned the things he told Nicky to make him lose his head. Homophobia, so be careful.

 

 

Matt felt like his whole life was centered around waiting for someone to tell him about Nicky. Good things, bad things, Bee, the twins or Nicky himself; it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that, in the end, Matt spent another two hours waiting.

He skipped class. Wymack made an half-hearted attempt at scolding him into going, but he actually abandoned his mission after half an attempt.

Neil went to the freezer and Matt knew without looking he was checking for ice-cream, to see if there were any left for Andrew when he'd come back.

“I’m going to the mall,” he said after. “Want to come with?”

Andrew had taken the Maserati, so Matt was sure the responsible thing as a good best friend would have been to say yes and offer to take his truck. But the last place he wanted to go to was wherever Nicky lost his mind and beat his father to a pulp; and Neil could probably run all the way and back with how tense he looked at the moment, anyway.

“Nah, I’m fine.” Oh gosh. When did he turn into a Neil?! “I’ll check if Kevin and the girls have any alcohol left for when the monsters come back.” Neil looked at him funny for a moment. “What?"

He smiled a bit. “You say  _monsters_ like a good thing.”

Matt had nothing to answer to that.  _Monsters_ had long since being stripped of its original meaning; now it just meant three young adults with lots of shit to deal with but ultimately good and familiar, two of which were more murderous than the third. Yeah, maybe he had to rethink that one too, now. 

Neil left before Matt could deliberate on the topic, yet, after the door closed, he made no move to actually go and check on the people as he’d said he would. He just sat in the middle of the couch and stared at the black TV. Neil came back, and didn’t call him out but just sat beside him to wait too.

When the door room opened, both their heads snapped toward it. 

Nicky yawned in their faces before pressing on his eyes with his sane hand, his shirt mottled with a bit darker stain. “Andrew made me fall asleep in the backseat,” he said. “Aaron threw water at me to wake me up.”

Neil came back to his senses first and smiled at Nicky. “Did Andrew kill him for wetting the seats?”

“He has good aim, so not yet,” Andrew said. Matt hadn’t even noticed him and his twin coming in behind their cousin.

They looked worn out. Whatever happened, they didn’t just take Nicky to have a therapeutic nap while they drove around aimlessly. Whatever happened, it must have been intense enough that Nicky was completely exhausted by the end of it, and the twins were still shaken over it, too much to argue among themselves.

“Neil went on a run and came back with ice-cream,” he said. Andrew frowned, probably torn between complaining over the extreme effort and just making a beeline for his threat. “And the girls should come over with the alcohol soon enough. Allison went on a shopping spree at the liquor store.”

Nicky pointed at him solemnly. “ _That_ is the best news of the entire day,” he proclaimed. “Fuck, the entire  _month_!”

Neil stood up to reach Andrew as Nicky approached the couch. They passed each others by and Neil awkwardly patted him on the forearm. Nicky smiled at him brightly, but for once seemed content with just ruffling his hair up for a bit before turning and just plopping on his back on the cushions. 

His head fell straight into Matt’s lap. It was a comforting weight he couldn’t really resist to, after the scare of the day, so Matt instinctively ran his hands into the disarranged locks. “Ready to celebrate getting your very own mugshot?”

Nicky chuckled, but didn’t answer. He seemed content with the touch, as he rolled on his side so his face was in front of Matt’s stomach. “I looked so hot,” he slurred a bit with sleepiness.

“Never had a doubt.”

“Eat some dinner and take a shower before you fall asleep on your cuddle-buddy, Nicky.”

Nicky waved away Aaron’s exasperated comment with a wide movement of his arm. “Don’t wanna.”

“What are you, five?!”

“Five years old aren’t legally prosecutable by law,” Andrew pointed out. He had a pint of chocolate ice cream and a spoon in his hands and he was perched on a stool at the kitchen isle with Neil leaning into his side and idly playing with a rip on his jeans.

“He can be the exception.” Matt smiled as Aaron marched to the couch and grabbed on Nicky’s arm to pull him up. “Come on. I’ll help you wash up." 

Nicky grumbled and complained and whined, but if he really were the dead weight he liked to pretend Aaron wouldn’t have had a chance to pull him up, yet they were both standing just a second later.

“You should wrap his cast in a plastic bag so it doesn’t get wet,” Neil said.

“Thanks for the helpful and unnecessary notion, Josten, I know how to fucking care for a broken bone.”

Matt tensed as he watched Neil glaring at Aaron, though they both kept quiet. The tension from the last hours had them all still wrung tight and nervous, but he’d hoped they could make it through the night without unnecessary fights. Nicky looked between the two of them, confused.

“Did you two fight again? I’m really too tired to give you the ‘ _children, behave'_ speech right now. What happened?”

Aaron pursed his lips into a thin line, before spitting, “You went to him talking all that shit about us getting taken care of if you offed yourself, and he didn’t even think about saying anything!”

“Your cheerleader wasn’t much more solicit on the matter,” Andrew pointed out, a dangerous edge to his voice. A threat.

Aaron was going to answer, but he stopped when a hand wrapped around his wrist suddenly. Nicky’s face was ashen, and his eyes wide and blinking fast. “Wait, what? Is that what you thought I was—?”

He didn’t even finish the sentence, and he looked at Matt instead, who lowered his head, uncomfortable. “I had to tell them, Nicky,” he said. "We thought the worst when we came back and you weren’t here.”

Somehow, Nicky didn’t look angry or betrayed. He looked shocked, confused. Even scared. “No. No, no, that’s not— That’s not what I meant! I wasn’t thinking about that, I swear! Aaron. Aaron, listen to me, that’s not why— Katelyn was there when I got some news and I— I just panicked and then I went to the rooftop to take some air and Neil came and— It was just that I wanted to make sure, but I never thought about— Not in that moment. I promise, Aaron, Andrew, I mean it. Seriously!”

“Which news?” Andrew asked, cutting into his hastened monologue of apologies.

Nicky looked at him. “Uh?”

Andrew glared. “You panicked because of some news and said those things because Katelyn was there with you when it happened.  _Which. News._ ”

Matt was a bit confused from the question. What had the cousins talked about, if not all of that?, did they just stick to Luther? In any case, Nicky looked like a rabbit in a trap. He bit his lower lip as he averted his eyes from Andrew, but all he got was Aaron to grab onto his sleeve and shake it a few times. “What the fuck is going on, Nicky?”

“They know there’s something wrong anyway,” Neil added, shrugging. “You’re not helping them by keeping it a secret. They’re just going to assume the worst and act on it anyway.”

Point to Neil. Matt made a mental note to always involve him into any mess of the cousins, or at least get a speed course on how to handle them from him.

Nicky sent him a pleading look, but he probably had realized there was no lie he could come up with now. His shoulders slumped. Then he went to the bedroom, without a word. Aaron frowned and Matt was on the verge of following him when Andrew gestured them both not to with a soft “No”.

Matt glared at him from above the couch backrest. “What did he tell you on the car?"

Andrew looked at him like a kid to a school project. Matt felt like he didn’t score really high, but apparently he got just enough to pass, because the other opened up in a smirk that looked lots like the maniac ones from his time on drugs.

“Our dear Luther believes that the criminal aptitude may be infective so he claimed my brother and I are actually responsible for his son’s sudden act of vandalism. Similarly, he happens to believe that it was Nicky's perversions who cemented the ones Drake pushed into me and made me gay, so he was hoping to get Aaron to safety before we infected him too.”

“The fuck?! What the fuck does he think you are, vampires?” Matt couldn’t hold back. There was just too much idiocy and cruelty in those indirect words. 

He pictured Nicky standing there and having someone yell at him that he was no different from Drake and bashing Luther’s face in suddenly seemed a tame response.

He remembered the winter’s banquet of last year, Neil’s seething rage as he revealed to them Riko’s involvement in the Thanksgiving tragedy, and Nicky’s slow,  _felt_ , promise. “ _I’m going to kill him,_ ” he’d said. Now, Matt didn’t doubt he would have done it, had he gotten the chance to.

Suddenly, he wanted to say something else. To curse and possibly scream. Nicky’s return was the only thing preventing him from doing just so.

There was pile of letters, in his hands, all with the sign of the lawyer that Matt’s mother got for the twins for Aaron’s trial. Nicky handed them over to Aaron, and the gesture just looked  _tired_ , almost defeated. “My parents reported me for negligent guardianship of minors. Or whatever’s the big name of it, I don’t remember. The marrow of it is that they claimed I’ve been a lousy guardian to the two of you and that’s why all the shit that went down on Thanksgiving happened. And all the stuff before, actually. I don’t know, things seem to get worse every time I get news about it. Once it was my fault Drake got Andrew, then it was also my fault you became violent, then it was also my fault Andrew got sentenced for the brawl outside Eden’s Twilight. They tried to claim I’ve been brain washing you two with my homosexual agenda too, apparently, but the judge turned  _that_ down.”

“Just that?!” Aaron exclaimed, eyes wide as he hurried to open one of the letters and skim its contents. Andrew jumped off the stool, ice-cream abandoned on the kitchen aisle, to come closer and take it from his twin’s hands. Matt all but jumped to stand and Neil cursed in a low, sharp-sounding string of German words. “What about all the other charges?!”

Nicky shrugged. “I got a restraining order on Luther a while ago so he's not going to press charges for today since he shouldn't have been around me at all. For the rest, they can’t build a process over it, since you’re both adults now and didn’t press charges yourself, but the social services and a judge are evaluating to see if there’s proof to their claims.”

Matt frowned as he approached the group. “What does this mean for you? They can’t persecute over that stuff, nothing of it is your fault!”

“It’s not a trial they want, they know the twins wouldn’t support their accuses anyway,” Nicky said, shaking his head. “They are technically not under my custody anymore so it’s not like the social services can take them from me, in any case, but…” He bit his lip. Matt noticed he pat his pocket, where his phone was, and he shivered. “If the judge decides my parents were right, it will show up in my files. Nothing would really happen to me, but with a sentence for negligence with children on me, Erik and I will never make the cut for adoption.” His voice broke. “It’s not like we ever  _talked_ about having kids, so I didn’t want anyone to worry over this, but—yeah, it’s a bit of a hard hit.”

“That’s bullshit,” Aaron hissed, opening letter after letter and throwing them on the floor as none seemed to have the content he was hoping for. “You’re going to tell me  _Cass_ gets to foster children and you don’t?! Seriously?! Fucking bullshit.”

Nicky flinched when the name passed Aaron lips, but Andrew didn’t seem to react. If anything, he’d gone terribly still and Neil’s hand was hovering close but not touching. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Nicky insisted, sounding much like he was trying to convince himself. “I have a past with suicidal tendencies and still suffer from depression, so it’s not like I’d be the first candidate the social services would keep in mind. I probably shouldn’t have made a big deal out of it, actually; it doesn’t really matter whether they—“

“It  _does._ ” Nicky paused. Andrew narrowed his eyes at him as if daring him to contradict him. “It does matter.”

It mattered for Andrew. It mattered for the child Andrew had been, who could have had a Nicky when he was four but only got Drake's instead.

Nicky must have sensed the meaning of his words, or maybe it was just the sharpness of the tone, but he didn’t retort. They stood in uncomfortable silence, all five of them standing close in an almost circle around the puddle of letters on the floor.

Kevin opened the door without knocking, but stood on it as he looked at them with some confusion. “Uh, the girls are here?” he offered.

“With booze!” someone — Allison — yelled from behind him.

“Finally a good thing!” Nicky hurriedly bent to pick all the letters up as he faked a laugh. When he stood up, he looked at the twins with softer edges. “Can we just get drunk and deal with this tomorrow?”

“We just got Kevin out of his unhealthy coping mechanism,” Matt offered, trying to lighten the mood. “Do us all a favor and don’t go turning into an alcoholic.”

“Why does nobody call Andrew out?! He’s just as bad as Kevin, when he wants to!”

“Andrew drives,” Aaron said, clipped but with some sort of humour to his sigh.

“Fucking white boy privileges.”

Matt would have liked to say they all laughed, but he was actually the only one. Neil seemed confused and Aaron scoffed, while Andrew rolled his eyes and turned to go back to his abandoned ice-cream. 

Allison pushed Kevin aside just then and the girl forced their way into the room, bringing blankets and pillows and scarily big bags full of bottles. Andrew, for once, didn’t seem bothered and just grabbed at Neil’s shirt to pull him along toward the freezer. Aaron snatched a bottle that was appearing from the top of a bag in Dan’s hand and said he’d call Katelyn to come over and be right back, before he left the room.

Matt was left beside Nicky and didn’t think but just wrap an arm around his middle. Nicky smiled at him, a soft gesture before he looked at Dan and winked at her. “Lend me him for a night, would you? I promise I’ll behave!”

“You’ve never behaved once in your whole life, Nicholas Hemmick,” she laughed, settling her hoard on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Go on and do your things. Hug and cuddle and kiss, you know, all the macho men stuff."

Matt smirked. “Just bros being bros, Dan, you ain’t got to worry.”

“Don’t  _ever_  say that again, Boyd,” Allison hollered from the kitchen counter. She had made her way to the microwave to make popcorn and Matt contemplated telling her that putting three bags in at the same time wasn’t a good idea. But really, they all could use something to take their minds off of things and a little domestic accident involving a pop-corn rain didn’t seem too bad a distraction.

“You should call Erik,” Kevin said. He wasn’t looking at Nicky, though it was clear he was just rummaging through the stash to avoid making eye-contact. “We can set up without you, if you want.”

“Careful, Kev,” Matt teased. “Someone might even think you  _care_.”

They started bickering. Matt wasn’t surprised not thrown off by that. It gave Nicky the excuse to leave the room and put the letters away and call Erik to fill him up with today’s events.

Matt still slipped his phone out of his pocket as soon as Aaron came back and diverted Kevin’s attention. He knew he wouldn’t get an answer for a while, but he still typed his message anyway.

**—** _Tell me when you can catch a flight and I’ll buy you the ticket. Nicky needs you here. **—**_

Then he went back to help spreading blankets, pillows, alcohol and snacks all over the living room.

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt picks up a stray.

 

 

Much as they had done after Baltimore, the Foxes silently orbited around Nicky as their impromptu sleepover took form. The new recruits were nowhere to be seen, and Matt couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit glad at that. Sheena’s sneer was still painted in his mind and he kept finding himself serving Allison drink after drink every time his mind replayed the scene of her slamming the other girl against the wall. He might have been imagining it, but he had the feeling that Andrew was less hostile toward her too. 

In all of this, Nicky had showered and changed with Aaron’s assistance and had sprawled himself against Matt, silently humming as Renee dried his hair from her spot on the other side of the couch.

Andrew had left a while ago with his cigarettes and Neil had followed shortly after. Aaron and Kevin had taken over the kitchen and were taking care of lunch, somehow. Dan sat on the floor in between Matt’s knees and kept her head against his knees but her hand caressing Nicky’s slowly. 

Allison was furiously zapping channels on the TV, frowning the whole time, until finally she let the hand holding the remote fall in her lap and turned to look at them from the beanbag. “When do you take your meds?”

Matt froze, instinctively. He didn’t know  _why_ since the whole team knew now, but apparently Renee and Dan seemed to be caught off guard too.

Nicky just blinked at her, once then twice, before he looked at the hour displayed on the corner of the TV screen. “Around dinner, I guess? Usually half past five, but I don’t have a strict schedule.” Because up until now he’d taken the pills whenever he could get rid of the twins long enough to swallow the dose.

“From now, you do,” she declared. “And put a fucking alarm in your phone.” Though she pulled hers out too. Matt saw her tapping away and he guessed she’d been setting up a reminder to check on Nicky herself. Nicky’s ears went hot against his neck, and when Matt looked down he found him blushing a bit under the gruff care he was being afforded. “When in the morning?”

Nicky pulled away from Matt to look at her better. “After breakfast, I have to take them with a full stomach.”

“We’ll make sure to order something in for dinner,” Renee piped in. “Did you taken them this morning?”

“ _Yes, Mom_."

Matt cuffed him slightly on the nape. “I thought  _I_ was your mother."

Allison scoffed. “He needs an whole hoard of mothers.”

Yeah, that much was true. And by Nicky’s shrug, he knew it too.

Andrew and Neil chose that moment to come back, just as Aaron and Kevin tried to move whatever they fixed up for lunch to the coffee table. They all sat down and Matt took the chance to sneak a peak at his phone and check his new messages.

He smiled.

 

 

Wymack had called off practice for the whole day, claiming he needed to get drunk and then sober again to deal with the new situation before he would allow any of them back on his court. Kevin and Neil looked a bit skittish at the thought, but they held their tongues back. Matt was so proud of them. 

Much to the first-years’ surprise, the older Foxes set quarters where they were and didn’t move the whole day. They spent the afternoon playing video games and chatting and smothering Nicky in turns. Aaron even went to the extent of grabbing a blanket and draping his cousin in, though he complained about it the whole time.

Kevin and Neil ended up on the floor watching Exy on a computer. Andrew sat on the beanbag behind them and started a solitary game of throwing pieces of snack wrappers at their heads the whole time. Nicky had moved to lay his head on Matt’s lap again and waved in and out of sleep the whole time.

He must have fallen into a nightmare at a certain point, because he started struggling. Matt touched his forehead and called his name until he woke up, and when he did so, with a jump, Renee and Katelyn went to prepare some hot chocolate for everyone. Dan had moved to the beanbag with Allison, but stretched to pat him awkwardly on the ankle. Andrew stood up jerkily, a cigarette in his hand, but sat on the windowsill and smoke there instead of heading to the roof.

Aaron sat on the floor beside Matt’s legs, and there was no doubt the only reason was to be as close as possible to his cousin’s head. Nicky took the chance to diffuse the tension by sneaking a hand out of the blanket to ruffle his hair.

Matt’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he fished it out to check the caller ID. “It’s my mom, I’ve got to take it.”

“ _Mama’s Boyd_!” Nicky yelled, as he sat up to let him stand. Aaron groaned at the joke but Renee laughed sweetly. Kevin sent them a look that Matt didn’t wait to decipher in his hurry to slip in the corridor.

He felt like it took him years, when he finally was far enough to accept the call. “Hey!”

“ _The flight leaves in twenty minutes,_ ” a voice answered him, with no greetings. Matt had never realized Erik’s accent was still so thick when he spoke in English, but maybe it was the worry that made him clip his words so harshly and shattered his polite manners. “ _I took the fastest one so it’s fifteen hours._ ”

“Send me the terminal’s number and the landing time and I’ll pick you up from the airport.”

“ _Matthew. Thank you._ ”

Matt swallowed the lump in his throat. He didn’t even want to imagine how he’d feel if something like this were to ever happen to Dan and he was thousand miles too far to even offer support. “Don’t mention it, man. Just hurry up and come here.”

“ _I’m very tempted to barge into the pilot’s cabin. This is taking too long,_ ” Erik moaned. Nice to know Nicky wasn’t the only dramatic one in the couple.

“Don’t get arrested,” Matt said simply. He wanted to make a joke about Nicky having that covered for the day but then he realized it would be shitty. “We’re guarding him tight.”

“ _Make sure he eats,_ ” were Erik’s parting words.

Matt remembered Allison’s words about an hoard of mothers and he laughed.

 

 

He woke up in the dark to his phone vibrating in his tight grip. Nicky had turned in his sleep and was now buried deep into Kevin’s chest, lulled gently in the loose hoop of his arms. 

Matt took a moment to mentally coo over the scene, and he smiled as he remembered walking back into the room after his call and finding out  _Kevin Day_ of all people had stolen his place and was faking nonchalance as Nicky, from his lap, stared at the ceiling like his whole life had just been upturned. Allison had thrown a jab, but Nicky had turned and hugged Kevin tight before he could change his mind about being his human pillow.

In as much silence as he could, Matt stood up. He slipped into the bathroom and tried to be as fast and silent as he could, but when he opened the door again Andrew was already there, staring impassively at him. Seriously, Matt didn’t even have it in himself to ask  _how_ , he just focused on not screaming out in pure terror at the sudden apparition.

Andrew gave him a deadpanned look, as he outstretched a hand as if to demand something. “Neil knows your phone’s password, not that it would have been hard to figure out.” It was Dan’s birthday date. Matt didn’t know if he felt more outraged that Neil had helped Andrew steal his phone or that he knew he was right. He decided to settle on a generalized glare. “I’ll tell Nicky you’re out getting food when he wakes up. Try not to get arrested too.”

“Malls are full of shitty people, it seems,” but Matt handed over the pills bottle to Andrew. “One after breakfast. And you give them back to me when I come back.”

Andrew arched a brow. If to his defiance or surprised that he still considered himself responsible of Nicky’s medications, Matt didn’t know.

He left shortly after, with the neat feeling that both Neil and Renee had been silently watching the whole exchange.

 

 

Erik looked  _disheveled_ and Matt found out he’d call him at around four in the morning, German time. The man’s jeans and T-shirt were rumpled by the flight or a fast dressing and his hair was a mess.  _Erik_ as a whole, was a mess. He didn’t have any luggage, apparently, just a backpack with a change of clothes and his documents. 

“Will you be okay with your job?” Matt asked as they speed-walked out of the airport. He felt slightly guilty, now, at the thought of the alarm and hurry he’d put the other man in.

Erik shrugged as he ran a hand through his short hair. They were a golden blond warmer than Allison’s, and the green of his irises stood against the redness of his eyes. “I can’t find a single fuck to give about that, but yeah, probably. I don’t know. My dad called them when I was on the plane to say it was a family emergency, health stuff and all that. They have quite a supportive policy, in these cases."

A tiny mercy, Matt guessed. He wasn’t sure how Nicky would cope knowing his boyfriend was fired because of him, at the moment.

They jumped back into the truck when the clock had just hit eight in the morning. Erik had to be famished, but Matt had guessed he wouldn’t want to stop for food and just pointed a plastic bag behind their seats to him. As he munched on a depressing little sandwich, Erik stared at the road, but didn’t seem to really see it and they kept silent as they sped through the streets.

It was almost half past nine when Erik finally sighed. “Last time, he almost managed to.” Matt shivered at the unspoken words. “Maria walked in on him tying neck-ties together to hang himself. They didn’t tell Luther because suicide is a sin and he’d have gone mad for that.” Erik’s hand crumpled the aluminum foil from in his hand in a mean and furious gesture. “I had nightmares for weeks after he told me. I used to wake up and check on him every night until he told me to just share the bed. Not the most romantic thing, I guess."

Matt’s hands clenched on the steering wheel harshly. “I have no idea how you let him come back for the twins,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice thing to do! A very nice thing! And obviously he didn’t need your permission or whatever, I just meant… shit, I would have gone insane, not knowing how he was doing.”

“He had been in a much better head-space, back then. Though I’ll admit, there had been moments so dark with the twins, that I— I really wanted to beg him to come on and leave it all. Worrying for him makes me a terrible person, at times, I know.”

“The twins needed him,” Matt agreed. “But yeah, you were well in your right to be worried for him. It doesn’t make you a terrible person.”

Erik just hummed. They stared at the road until they finally breached the gates to the Palmetto State parking lot, shortly after, and Matt headed for his usual spot. “It’s not always easy, but we make it work.”

“How?” They parked and Matt turned off the engine, but he couldn’t help but ask. “It can’t be as easy as Nicky tries to make people believe."

At that, Erik actually let out a short laughter. “It’s absolutely not easy,” he admitted. He picked up his backpack and he and Matt headed for the Tower in hurried steps. They managed to get into an elevator without waiting. “We talk lots, though. Communication and all that, it really helps.” Erik shrugged. "In the end, it’s all about getting in each other’s pants."

Matt did a double take at that as the elevator’s doors closed. “WHAT?"

Erik blinked, surprised. “What?"

Matt hesitated. “What did you mean, just now?”

“You know, when you— try to see things from someone else’s prospective?, try to understand how they feel or what they think? What’s wrong?”

For a moment, Matt held his breath, but the laughter in his throat was too strong and bursted out of his sealed lips like water against a dam. Erik looked at him with borderline-worried surprise.

When Matt had explained to him what the difference between  _getting in someone’s pants_ and  _getting in someone’s shoes_ was, Erik blushed slightly. “Oh!,” he said. Then, suddenly, he paled. “ _Oh._ Oh no _._ "

Matt arched a brow. The numbers at the top of the elevator were reaching their floor.

Erik sighed a long and defeated sound. “I am moderately sure I used that expression in front of the twins more than once.”

Matt giggled at the thought of Andrew and Aaron hearing something like that. Then he realized Nicky must have known of the mishap and did nothing to clear it up, and his laughter came back full force. What an asshole.

The moment the doors of the elevator opened, they could hear the Foxes’ voices filling the corridor. Nicky’s and Allison’s atop of all the others, they were loudly singing the lyrics from some song from Grease. Matt felt slightly panicked at the idea of showing Erik an intoxicated Nicky, at barely ten in the morning, just after he promised he was taking care of him.

Erik, though, seemed to almost relax at the sound. “They found something to do, at least?,” he offered.

Matt only sighed in answer. He moved forward so that he’d be covering Erik and then he opened the door.

It only surprised him  _slightly_ that the first thing that caught his eyes, behind the figures of Nicky and Allison bundled up on the couch and swinging in time to the song, was Andrew’s killer glare at the door. They must have made it just in time to avoid a mass murder.

“Matt! Why did you leave us?!”

Matt was probably a bit too happy to have a chance to avoid Andrew, but he was honest when he smiled at Nicky’s fake pout. “Sorry, I went out for groceries and found a stray on my way back.”

Allison’s brow arched at the words, though Andrew’s sigh was loud enough to make her turn for a moment to him. Nicky just frowned. “A stray?”

He didn’t mean to, but Matt’s lips split up in a huge grin as he took a step aside.

Nicky’s jaw hit the floor. After a moment, though, he was up and sprinting so fast Matt swore he missed the movement when he blinked. Suddenly, Nicky was into Erik’s space and releasing an impressively long sigh.

While it was true that Erik’s frame was bigger than Nicky’s, he looked even bigger when his boyfriend slumped against his chest and hid his face there, hands palms open on his pecs and head bowed low enough to be stuck under the other’s chin. Erik’s arms circled his boyfriend fully and kept him close as they spoke low German words to each others.

Matt didn’t notice Dan approaching, but he felt her slipping her hand in his and he squeezed right back. He felt better, as if for the first time after the whole mess he could finally admit to himself that Nicky was as okay as possible, right now, and that he was doing something good in his clumsy attempts at help.

He still didn’t know where Nicky’s home was, geographically speaking, but he felt rather sure he could say that the most emotional side of it was finally grouped up in their tiny college room. And that was good.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you know how long I waited to use the "Mama's Boyd" joke? Appreciate it. Validate my sense of humour.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Depression has side effects. Matt didn't know.

 

It wasn’t fair, Matt knew, but he couldn’t stop wondering how many of the calls he had assumed were a long-distance couple having kinky virtual sex had actually been Nicky turning to Erik to get some sort of support in the middle of the shit-storm he’d been thrown in. In his defense, he didn’t have much more to do as he waited for the two of them to come out from the bedroom, where they had retreated to talk.

Always true to her words, Renee had ordered dinner in for everyone, and Allison had haughtily thrown her credit car across the room to pay for everyone. Neil and Andrew had disappeared with half a bottle of whisky and their cigarettes and Katelyn had come back from her classes, heading straight for Aaron so they were now sharing the beanbag.

Technically speaking, Matt was watching Dan playing video games from his lap against Kevin, sitting just besides them. Practically, he was staring blankly at the screen and mentally naming every mistake he’d made since the beginning of this situation, and how to better handle the situation in the future.

Every now and then, Dan moved a hand to his thigh and squeezed it, just enough to pull him out of his thoughts to give her a flimsy smile.

The door kept close and they kept ignoring it.

When Neil had come back from Baltimore, Nicky had called the team his family, and before that, Nicky had called the monsters Neil’s family. Sometimes Matt wondered if Nicky knew that family was not one-sided.

 

 

Matt blinked himself drowsily out of sleep when he heard the sound of a door opening. He turned instinctively to the entrance door, before he realized the sound came from the bedroom door. Nicky looked tired but for once in a good way, as he stumbled out of the room without loosening the grip of his arms around his boyfriend’s waist. Erik smiled in a slightly indulgent but affectionate way, meeting Matt’s eyes to give him a slight shrug as if to say, I can’t resist him anyway.

Nicky’s lips were red and slightly swollen and bent in a soft smile. “I could eat an elephant.”

“Tough luck,” Allison yelled at him from the kitchen counter, raising her eyes from her phone for the first time in hours to send an assessing gaze at the two of them. “We only got Mexican tonight.”

Nicky pinned his chin on Erik’s shoulder to blink at her, probably waiting for a joke, but when it didn’t come he smiled. “It better be spicy as fuck,” he said.

“Spicy as you,” Erik piped in, turning his head just enough to smack a kiss on Nicky’s temple. Nicky laughed.

Matt felt a pang in his chest, a little tug at his heartstrings telling him that he never managed to relax Nicky as much, no matter how hard he tried.  _Did you, though? Did you try hard enough?, did you try at all?_

Aaron and Katelyn were distributing plastic dishes to everyone, while Neil was staring at Andrew mixing drinks. Erik eyed the concoctions warily and got himself a glare in return.

Renee smiled. “Nicky will be fine as long as he sticks to beer and doesn’t exaggerate.”

“Wait a minute, that’s not fair! I’m the one who needs the comfort food, right now!”

“Comfort food and liquid courage are not the same thing,” Aaron commented, sliding two full dishes toward his cousin and respective boyfriend. “Kevin would know.”

“Liquid courage won’t slow you down on court as much a peanut butter does, apparently,” Kevin said, sighing as he received his own dish, just as full.

Nicky pointed his fork at him threateningly. “Don’t go there, Day. I’m depressed and suicidal: you take my peanut butter from me, it’s on you if I do something stupid.”

Matt was not the only one who sucked his breath at the words. Kevin’s eyes widened and looked ready to fall off his skull, and Dan made a strangled sound in her throat as she tried not to choke. Aaron had paled noticeably and Katelyn seemed to be crushing his hand. Andrew was blank and unreadable as he stared at his cousin.

Neil blinked slowly. “Did you just use your mental illness to get out of Kevin’s meal plan?”

Nicky grinned at him, blinding and beaming. “There’s close to nothing I wouldn’t use for that.”

Erik snorted. It was like the sound broke the cold around the table, and a chorus of sighs and half laughters filled the room again. Renee was shaking her head gently and Aaron was glaring at his cousin, but the air was softer now.

“Your sense of humour is disturbing,” Allison commented. “Not a news, but still surprising at times.”

Nicky didn’t answer. He just shrugged and leaned back against his boyfriend, hoarding both their dishes close. Erik offered him some beer and got fed a piece of some kind of chicken in return. They spent the rest of the meal watching Erik pretending he was not crying because of the spices and consoling Nicky that, yes, he was still in time to help his boyfriend build some resistance, he didn’t have to make do with bland food.

 

 

It was soon after lunch that they gravitated back to the couch and the various nests of blankets. The girls took hold of the remote and commandeered the TV, so Neil and Kevin bundled up in the beanbags to watch Exy on the PC. Andrew sat near the windowsill but lit up no cigarette for once, and Aaron sat at the desk just beside his twin’s legs and watched his girlfriend and the lady Foxes. Matt and Erik took opposite sides of the couch so that Nicky could sit between them, and half an hour later the guy was asleep with his head in his boyfriend’s lap and his feet on Matt’s.

Dan took a picture, for the wall.

Matt found himself drawing circles with his thumb around Nicky’s ankles and tried to blink the sleep away to look at Erik, but he was smiling softly as he carded his head through his lover’s loose hair and seemed unbothered by the physical contact. Matt relaxed against the backrest.

He didn’t know what he had been worried about. Nicky mentioned his agreement with Erik more than once, it was clear they spoke about everything, most definitely about Matt too. It was impressive, now that he thought about it.

Maybe because of the tiredness from the stressful last days, maybe because of the alcohol or the atmosphere or the way Erik was looking at Nicky, like he was the most beautiful start in the sky, but Matt found himself mumbling, eyes half closed. “Thank you.” Erik looked up, expression a bit surprised, and the noise in the room seemed to have dulled out a bit. Or maybe it was just Matt’s brain well on its way to a full shut-down for the next ten hours _at least_. Matt could feel his mouth slouching around the words. “For lettin’ me care for him.”

Something thumped against his knee. Maybe Dan’s head, maybe she was looking up at him. He was too tired to check.

Erik tilted his head a bit to a side, studying him. “It’s not like I am letting anything. Nicky is his own person, he can make his choices. If he trusts you, that’s fine by me. And I know you’ve been good for him, he told me.” Matt hummed something, but Erik didn’t seem to hear. He was looking down at Nicky again, and now his face was tinted with a bit of something. Tiredness?, sadness? Matt wasn’t sure, but it sent an unpleasant shiver down his spine that woke him up a little. “I think I’ll always be grateful to you for looking after him as I couldn’t, even if he won’t remember it.”

Matt blinked. His thoughts tried sluggishly to put the words in a way that would give them sense, and failed. “What?”

When Erik looked up again, his green eyes met Matt’s head on, unflinching, but his voice was a low, hesitant whisper.

“Amnesia can be a long-lasting effect of depressive episodes,” he said. “When Nicky came to Germany first, when he started feeling better, he realized he couldn’t remember much of the time he’d spent at his parents’ home since after the camp. And even when he was with us, sometimes he couldn’t remember anything we’d done the day or the week before. By he end of the year, he’d forgotten, I don’t know, a twenty percent of what had happened in those months.” Erik looked down on Nicky again. He was sleeping, for once peacefully. “He freaked out about it at first, so we’d take lots of pictures of everything we did or saw. He kind of accepted it as he got better, so I hope it will be easier this time.”

Now, Matt knew the room was eerily silent for real. Someone had muted the TV, and both Neil and Kevin had pulled the headphones out. He was awake now. He was so fucking awake every nerve of his seemed to be frying and pulling and thinning to the brink of snapping.

Nicky could… not remember everything? What would he forget? Would he remember the kind-of-sleepover the monsters did for him? Would he remember sharing Matt’s bed and cuddling and whispering in the dark until Aaron threw pillows at them to make them shut up? Would he remember joking about their teammates and the little things all of them did to let him know he was loved and cherished? Or would he forget all of that and believe to be a burden again?

Matt’s hands were shaking. He noticed when Dan grabbed them tightly enough to turn his fingertips a dark red.

Erik must have realized everybody’s shock because he looked around the room for a moment before sighing. “I guess Nicky kept this to himself?"

“To the surprise of absolutely no one,” Aaron said. Matt was glad Nicky was asleep because there was enough poison in his voice to kill a bull.

Katelyn stood to get closer to him, braving Andrew’s closeness as well. “Maybe he won’t forget this time?,” she offered, though her voice was thin. “Up until now, he’s never seemed—“

“He used the same excuse twice,” Matt spoke before thinking, and then gulped under the attention. “For the letters from his lawyer. He used the same excuse twice. I thought it was weird because that’d be suspicious, but—“

“He probably forgot about the first time,” Erik nodded. His hand had stalled in its pats through Nicky’s curls, but it resumed moving as he looked back down at him. “It’s a minor detail, though, so maybe it won’t be too bad this time.”

The sound of a camera going off made Matt turn suddenly, and meet Renee’s serene but also firm expression. She looked back at him and then at Erik. “Then we do what you did last time,” she said, simple, with a soft smile. “We take pictures and records. Lots of them. We remember for him.”

The thing about Renee was, you couldn’t just tell her _no_. You couldn’t claim she was lying. She may as well have been wrong or tricking you, but you just had to go along with her, it was just an invincible compulsion. One that Matt surrendered himself to willingly, this time.

Andrew pulled his cigarettes out and brought one to his lips. He didn’t move to leave the room, just slammed the window open. Neil looked at him and seemed to read something in his behavior because he put the headphone back in and then elbowed Kevin to start the match up again. Slowly, everyone got back to what they were doing. Allison turned the volume of the TV up again with a huff, and then a bit louder just to get Kevin to glare at her. Dan opened a new bottle of beer and gulped down big mouthfuls before handing it backward to Matt, who took it and chugged down everything he could with a single breath.

So Nicky may not remember everything. Okay. That was horrible, but Matt could do it. As Renee said, _remember for him_. It wouldn’t be the hardest task he’d had to carry out in the past months, after all.

Nicky mumbled something in his sleep, about a failing mark he didn’t want, and Erik was back to caressing him just as Matt was back to massaging his ankles.

_We can still help you_ , Matt imagined himself saying. Promising.

Nicky relaxed again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amnesia as a side effect of the Major Depression Disorder is pretty common so I wanted to point this out about Nicky's canonical condition, that there must have been a time when he was in Germany in which he realized he couldn't remember things from home and most of all he would not remember things about Erik once he'd be back in the States. I can't imagine how terrible that must have felt, before he decided, "you know, fuck it, I'm moving here anyway".
> 
> I actually think we're basically to the end? There will be one last chapter for sure and then either an epilogue or one full chapter, but I have yet to see ^^ Sorry for the long wait, I had a few deadlines to meet and there's an exam approaching on Dec 20th so I'm kinda drowning in stuff to do. I'll try to update sooner next time!


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's never been an Epilogue with quite so many flashbacks in it. Whatever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings (because what?, did you think you'd be safe in the epilogue? naïve): some religious homophobia on Nicky's parents' part, in particular Maria cites a few passages from the Proverbs that I connect to Child Abuse, so look out for that. 
> 
> Related to this, I'd like to point out that I'm all Nicky in this and I believe the verses cited in this chapter are the most utter bullshit, and I talk as a Christian living in Italy (you know, Rome? the Pope? yeah, all that stuff). Seriously. Don't believe in them.

 

 

Here was the thing, courtesy of Wymack there was enough booze to rival how much Allison had bought last time — plus what they didn’t finish back then —, Dan had connected her phone to the surround system of the TV and let her Spotify “Go Foxes!!!” playlist run wild, and the new foxes were too much in awe at being allowed into a first-string celebration to actually misbehave.

( _Too much_ , Andrew had already almost closed Jack’s hand into the fridge, but, hey,  _Foxes._ )

So there was music filling the room, voices chattering and bottles clinking, and someone had set up Mario Kart without realizing — or maybe perfectly knowing — what they were doing. Allison had taken the first controller with a jump that had landed her pointy heel one inch or less from Kevin’s left hand, and he still had to return to a normal shade of pink but was still bravely holding onto his third controller. Renee had snatched the second one for Neil and she was being her usual angel self trying to teach him what button did what. The fourth was somehow into the hands of Aaron, who looked determined to play with Katelyn in his lap and whose eyes had been sending death threats to Neil the whole time. It was hard to keep track of everyone with so many less-known foxes around, but Matt was pretty sure Andrew was in the kitchen, raiding the freezer for ice-cream or possibly guarding it, it was a toss up.

Matt had been in the bean bag with Dan, ready to savor the carnage of the imminent game, but he had looked behind himself and caught Erik entering the bathroom. Now, beer in his hand, he was approaching Nicky and smiling.

Nicky was sitting on the windowsill, at least until Andrew came to dethrone him, and looked peaceful and serene as he hadn’t in a long time. He had a little bottle of ginger ale in his hand and was wearing a suit jacket over his rainbow Pride t-shirt and skinny-tight jeans. He had dressed up for a party, even if they had ended up staying in, and he looked nice.

Matt sat down on the edge of the desk, just besides him, and outstretched a hand to caress his hair. They were soft as fuck, mainly because after the whole disaster of today's trial Allison had dragged Nicky in her room and had started one of her self-care routines that seemed to have work a miracle. Whatever she had put in his hair also smelled faintly of something spicy, and Nicky had been making everyone smell it for the past three hours.

It was midnight or maybe one, who cared? It was a nice night.

Nicky looked up to him, through thick eyelashes, and Matt’s smile almost dropped for a moment.

 

_Nicky wasn’t crying, when he stepped out of the judge’s room. Andrew and Aaron behind him were just blank, as usual, and Erik was too busy looking at his boyfriend with soft worried eyes to be of any use._

_The foxes had closed their ranks, as they always did, and they had waited in the corridor as the last meeting went on. It had taken barely an hour. Was it a good or a bad thing? Did it mean they hadn't even listened to the twins? Or had they listened to them and dismissed every evidence Luther brought?_

_Nicky blinked when he found them all, as if he hadn't truly believed they would be waiting for this whole shitshow to be over, then he found Matt’s eyes and his lashes wetted a bit._

_“She dismissed all the charges,” he said, slowly, his voice a whisper in the hallway. “Said she couldn’t believe what she’d been made to read and hear these past weeks.”_

_“She called it a_ shameful assemble of bigoted assumptions without any evidence _,” Aaron stepped it, slightly smug but clearly still somber. “Luther’s lawyer almost had a heart attack.”_

_“But?” Abby prodded gently._

_“But she doesn’t think the concerns about my mental health are wrong.” Nicky looked lost, like leaf in the wind, twirling with confusion trying to find the right direction._

_Erik’s hand went fast to his lower back._ _“She said it’s_ enough _,” he corrected. “She said she thought it hadn’t been fair to place the twins in your care when you himself were so young and had been dealing with your own trauma and issues. You heard her. This isn’t punishment for something wrong you did. It’s just— You taking a break. You focusing on yourself and healing and being better.”_

_“You’ll be allowed to try for adoption in a few years, if you’ll still want. As long as you stick to your therapy and Dobson, you’re going to get better, and by then they’ll have nothing to deny you_ _,” Aaron pointed out, shrugging. “Looks like a win to me.”_

_Nicky hummed something, but said nothing. Matt’s heart had plummeted at the first words, but it was slowly lifting again in his chest, until it finally reached his throat and chocked whatever word he might have had. Lacking those, he stepped forward and hugged Nicky. He felt their bodies lean against each other a bit. “It’s great,” he said._

 

The tingling sound of the ginger ale bottle against his beer brought him back to the present. He blinked once and Nicky arched a brow at him. Erik’s jacket was too big on his shoulders, it was a cute sight. “What? The show too crude for you?”

Matt turned to check on the TV and, truth to be told Neil and Aaron were side by side and happily trying to push each other into the magma, while Allison and Kevin were doing much the same except in real life, as their characters were too far apart to do the same. 

“Yeah,” he laughed, “Too much bloodshed before bedtime, I’m going to get nightmares.”

It was a weak joke, but it wasn't the right atmosphere for much more. Nicky leant with his head against the window frame and smiled at the room. Andrew had come out of the kitchen, and was sitting on the empty beanbag, looking quite amused — for his standards, at least —. It was a nice, normal night in Fox Tower. It had been so long since it last happened.

They sat in silence for a while, the air already saturated with sounds from literally everybody else in the suite, and it was relaxing. Nicky’s fingers found Matt’s wrist and he entwined their hands together instead. They both squeezed, then looked at each other and bursted out giggling. It was like they were drunk stupid, except without the drunk part. Matt bent down to knock their foreheads together.

They stayed like that for a bit, though it couldn’t be long because Erik had yet to come out of the bathroom when they parted. Actually, why was Erik taking this long? Was he okay? 

"Hey, Matt?"

Nicky’s voice pulled him from his thoughts, and he looked back at him, surprised. “Mh?”

He got himself a smile for his eloquence. "I’m gay.”

Matt blinked.

 

_They were ready to leave by the time the door opened again and Maria walked out, her lawyer following her with a cloudy expression, and Matt stiffened. He knew Luther hadn’t been able to personally attend because of his injuries, but his wife was no better than him. And the Foxes must have thought the same because they were suddenly all much closer to Nicky, and Wymack’s hand had found his shoulder. “Let’s go home, Hemmick. We’re done here._ _”_

_They were. Maria apparently wasn’t, though, because she turned and took a couple steps toward them. Andrew moved, the threat clear in how he caressed his armbands, and she stopped but didn’t move her eyes from her son. She looked ready to cry._

_“I’m sorry,” she said._

_Matt saw Nicky’s shoulders stiffening at the same time as Andrew turned swiftly to him, a warning in his eyes, mistrust written everywhere on his face. There was no blaming him for that. Even Erik grabbed Nicky’s wrists as if to beg him not to listen._

_Nicky stared, for too long to believe he’d accepted her words. “What for?” he asked, his voice betraying how he was readying himself for the hurt, the pain, that always came with letting his parents close._

_Maria sobbed. “It is our fault you became_ this _. I thought about it for so long, I read the Scriptures, I— I—.”_

_It was like she broke down, there, in front of them. She made the crux sign on herself and crying she started to mutter something. It was barely loud enough to be heard from them, and Matt’s blood froze when he realized what is was._

_"Proverbs, 13:24;” she cried, "'_ He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him _.’  Proverbs, 23:13;_   _'Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.’  Proverbs, 22:15; 'Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.’—”_

_Matt was petrified in his place. He knew, because Nicky told him, that his family had never hurt him physically, not directly at least, and that punishments were more on the lines of withheld meals and forced volunteering hours and long lists of prayers to say. And now Maria was, what?, saying they should have beaten him up as a child? That if they did, he wouldn’t have grown up to be gay? And she dared to say so in front of Aaron, after all Tilda did to him, and Andrew, with all that he’d been through in his whole life?_

_Actually, she dared to say so in front of all the Foxes?_ _Matt turned to check, because he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, to be honest._

_He found shocked and enraged faces, and Wymack looked ready to punch her himself. Neil swore, loudly, and Maria winced at the words, interrupting her litany, if only for a second._ _Aaron took a step toward her, but Nicky’s hand was fast enough to grab his bicep before he could._

_"You know what?”_   _Nicky’s voice was controlled, firm. There was no trace of disappointment, because he clearly hadn’t been expecting anything good from his mother, after all. Instead, he was looking at her with a coldness Matt was sure he had never seen him use. "I’m so glad I took the twins from you. And I can’t, and won’t, forgive you or Luther for what you did to me, Aaron and Andrew, I don’t care how much God may want me to. Forgiveness can’t come free for something like this, I’ll tell that to the Big Boss if it ever comes to it."_

_Maria paled at the words. If for the accuse or the implied rage or the way Nicky was speaking of God, nobody knew, because he didn’t let her say anything back._ _“Goodbye.” Nicky put his jacket on, indifferent. "I’d wish you to be happy, but I’m not that good of a person, and I know whom you’re married to."_

_He turned. Erik was the fastest to recover, and put his arm around his boyfriend's shoulders as the whole group tried to move compactly toward the exit._

_Maria didn’t call after them. It was better for her. Renee looked, for once, murderous enough to strike her herself._

_Matt stole a look at Nicky, who sighed deeply as they all entered the — thankfully huge — elevator._

_“I guess it was bound to happen,” he said, lowly but loud enough for everyone to hear. “That’s what happens when you live too long with little smart-mouthed assholes. I blame the twins and Neil, they rubbed off on me!”_

_“Let’s fucking hope not because I don’t need more troublemakers in my press duty roaster,” Wymack grumbled from the head of the group. “Now let’s get the hell out of here and back home. I need some serious booze to deal with this."_

 

Matt was not as stupid as to believe Nicky’s words were barely what they said. After his mother’s words, they were a claim and an assurance and a laughter to the sky. They were a big, thick, satisfied  _Fuck You._  

He had always known Nicky was one resilient son of a bitch, but never as much as today.

"So you are, Nicky,” he smiled. He was not crying, it was just the beer messing with his feelings, okay?

Nicky eyed him and arched a brow with mock suspicion, but laughed as Matt punched his shoulder. Kevin cursed Allison loudly, and someone complained it was their turn. Andrew dared Renee. She took the controller form Neil and smiled too innocently to be reassuring.

“Hey, Matt?” Nicky said again.

“Mh?” Matt said, turning back to him.

Nicky was watching the room, the people, his family. Erik was coming out of the bathroom looking pale and sweaty and— Matt had to clamp his teeth on his tongue not to say anything as he caught a glimpse of a little black box in his hand before the German hid it behind his back.

“I think—“ Nicky hesitated, then turned to Matt again, his back to his boyfriend. "I think I’m going to be okay. Eventually. Not yet, but— yeah.”

Matt met Erik’s eyes for one second and then looked back to Nicky and beamed. He couldn’t help himself. “You are going to be, Nicky,” he promised, standing up to go back to Dan and leave the set up empty so that Erik could do what he’d taken twenty minutes in the bathroom to be ready for. “I am absolutely sure."

It was one in the morning or maybe two. Wymack would scold them for all the noise complaints he would receive next morning, or maybe not because deep inside he was a huge softie. Half the team was fighting over a videogame and the other half was drinking like there was no tomorrow. Erik was standing in front of a confused Nicky and Matt was sure that Dan must still have the veil from when she dressed up as the Corpse Bride for one halloween so he would go look for it. 

Soon. In a minute.

They had all the time, after all.

Nicky shrieked.

 

 

**_“Well, I’ve been there, sitting in the same chair_**

**_whispering that same prayer half a million times._**

**_It’s the lie, though, buried in disciples:_ **

**_one page of the Bible isn’t worth a life.”_**

**_The Village - Wrabel_ **

 

 

**_The End_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, wow. This is the end. It's been so long since I last wrote the word Eng to a WIP of mine, I'm crying right now. 
> 
> Done crying, now buckle up because I have some stuff to say. 
> 
> Let's be real, I've started this story because I had many things happening at once in my life.  
> First of all, I came out to my family, but was stupid enough to do it via phone and then hung up because I had to go so I spent hours of agony because I logically knew they'd be okay with it but logic can do jack shit in these situations, let me tell you;  
> Second, a person I really love so, so much ended up developing certain mental disorders. I don't want to go into detail, but it took a long time to convince them to seek professional help and at times I really, really felt like Matt, which is why his prospective is so dark in some chapters. Sorry about that;  
> Third, if you follow my tumblr ( **@agapantoblu** , if anyone wants to chat with me), you know I decided early this year that I wanted the Final Essay for my Major in Psychology to be on the topic of Reparative Therapies of LG people and What Makes Them Utterly Unethical. When I started this project I was still talking to professors to find one who'd be willing to work with me on such a topic, and I finally found someone around a month ago so, yay! Still, I've been diving in books and articles that treat homosexuality as a mental disorder and that talk about conversion therapies like the ones Nicky has been subjected to, so I was having many, MANY, dark feelings about it and my coping mechanism was "Let's write a story in which someone fucking takes care of Nicky because he DESERVES IT" so here we are.  
> Sorry for this long note, I really wanted to tell you this, though. 
> 
> That said, I'm really proud of how this story turned out. I wasn't expecting it to be so long or to give me so many feelings or to be so well and largely received. Thanks to all of you who left kudos, and thanks a bit more to those who also commented. Your words made me feel so happy and proud and were the support I needed for all the reasons listed above. I can't really explain how much it mattered to me.
> 
> Well, that's it, I think I've said all I wanted to say, except that I really love Nicky but that was heavily implied so it's fine.
> 
> Thank you again, everyone, and I hope you liked how this story went. Let me know (because I want to and because I crave validation like every other writer on this website)!
> 
> See you!
> 
> Agap
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _P.S.: Did I sneak a surprise marriage proposal into my Epilogue? Yes. Yes, I did._

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: Apparently people want more of this, so here, have it.
> 
> I just really needed to write this.
> 
> Find me at: @agapantoblu.tumblr.com


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